'It's Never Done This': Arkansas River Keeps Flooding, Testing Levees And Patience

The Arkansas River just keeps rising. The usually placid tributary of the Mississippi has become a bloated torrent carrying entire trees downstream, drowning riverfront property and halting commerce for hundreds of miles.

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said Thursday the high water is costing the state economy an estimated $23 million each day. The river is currently forecast to crest on Wednesday in Little Rock, and there is so much water moving downstream that it will likely be more than a week before floodwaters begin to recede from many areas.

His state joins others from the Dakotas down to Louisiana that have been dealing with weeks or even months of record-breaking flooding along the Mississippi River and its major tributaries. Back-to-back rainstorms have swept across the region, sometimes dumping inches of rain in just hours.

And, while flooding is a part of life along the rivers, this spring's relentless, extreme rain makes the disaster unfolding at the center of the country emblematic of a larger trend: Climate change is causing more extreme rain in some parts of the U.S., and that can cause more extreme flooding.