Flooding in St. Louis has left people trapped in their homes under 7 feet of water

By Amir Vera and Andy Rose, CNN

While flash flooding in St. Louis, Missouri, had tapered out in the last two days, a new round of storms Thursday afternoon left emergency responders scrambling to rescue residents.

The St. Louis Police Department tweeted Thursday one section of the city was submerged in 7 feet of water, leaving area residents trapped in their homes.

The city’s fire department reported multiple drivers being stranded on flooded roads, including six children at a daycare center who were later rescued, the department tweeted.

“Firefighters carried six children to safety from high/standing water,” the tweet read. No injuries were reported at the daycare, which the fire department says was operating inside a church building.

Businesses along Washington Avenue, where the daycare facility is located, are also being flooded, according to the National Weather Service.

The scenes of devastation in St. Louis come two days after torrential and record-breaking rainfall caused flash flooding in the city. The floods left at least one person dead, other residents trapped and caused multiple road closures on several interstates. More than 9 inches of rain fell from late Monday to Tuesday, surpassing the city’s highest 24-hour rainfall total on record, which was 7.02 inches on August 19 through 20, 1915, the National Weather Service said.

Thursday afternoon’s rainfall — about 2 to 3 inches — was bad enough that a flash flood warning was issued for St. Louis until 5:45 p.m., according to the weather service.

“Flash flooding is ongoing in areas around the I-70 corridor in St. Louis County and St. Louis City,” the weather service said.

But there is hope for dryer days on the horizon, according to CNN meteorologist Taylor Ward.

The rain Thursday was lighter than two days ago, and it will shift south of the city for the next few days. Friday and Saturday should be dry, Ward said.

The recent rainfall in St. Louis has less than a 1 in 1,000 chance of happening in a given year based on historical data, the weather service said.

But the climate crisis is pushing such extremes to become more frequent, and is supercharging rainfall around the world. The atmosphere can hold more moisture as temperatures climb, making it even more likely that significant records will be broken. More water vapor in the atmosphere means more moisture available to fall as rain, which leads to higher rainfall rates.

Human-caused fossil fuel emissions have warmed the planet a little more than 1 degree Celsius on average, with more intense warming over land areas.

Scientists are increasingly confident in the role that the climate crisis plays in extreme weather, and have warned that these events will become more intense and more dangerous with every fraction of a degree of warming.

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CNN’s Jason Hanna, Caroll Alvarado and Raja Razek contributed to this report.