Report: April storms that caused “generational” flooding made 40% more likely by climate change

“Generational” April storms that brought historic rainfall and a record number of tornadoes to states in the Central Mississippi River Valley like Arkansas were made 40% more likely due to the warming climate, according to a new report from an international coalition of climate researchers.

The analysis, published Thursday by World Weather Attribution, which is housed under Imperial College London, says the rainfall was “the worst ever recorded in this region,” with economic damages estimated between $80 and $90 million across the affected states. The vast majority occurred in Arkansas, which had roughly $78 million in agricultural damages.

Researchers, who analyzed weather data and climate models for the study, told reporters during a briefing Tuesday that it would cost Arkansas farmers $42 million to replant.

Meanwhile, the University of Arkansas System, which was not part of the study, came to similar conclusions. Ryan McGeeney, a communications specialist for the University of Arkansas System’s Division of Agriculture, said they estimated there were roughly $79 million in agricultural damages, mainly as a result of flooding.

The timing of the flooding mitigated the impact, McGeeney said. Winter wheat crops in the affected areas were a total loss, he said, while corn also suffered damage but could be replanted. The soybean crop was rebounding, but the jury was still out on whether the rice crop would be affected, he added.

In the grand scheme of things, McGeeney said, $79 million is a drop in the bucket compared to the economic impact of agriculture as a whole in Arkansas — $24.3 billion.

Bernadette Woods Placky, the chief meteorologist for Climate Central, which participated in the research, credited the National Weather Service for accurate and early warnings that likely saved numerous lives.

“Staff in local National Weather Service offices worked around the clock to provide life-saving information and services,” Woods Placky wrote. “This is an example of how critical these employees are and why recent workforce cuts risk undermining their ability to keep people safe.”

Multiple experts have raised alarms in recent months about proposals to cut funding to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — of which the NWS is a part — fearing that cuts to NOAA will hamstring the weather office’s ability to make accurate forecasts. 

Many local NWS offices are already understaffed, and a hiring freeze that has been in place since the start of the second Trump administration has left the service unable to hire the specialized technicians needed to repair its radar systems or to fill open forecasting positions.

According to the analysis, the similar extreme rainfall events are “relatively rare, expected to occur in today’s climate only once every 90-240 years.” However, in a cooler climate, the analysis found, “extreme rainfall such as observed would be even rarer.”

“Fossil fuel warming is clearly driving more intense, and increasingly costly, extreme weather across the US,” said Ben Clarke of the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London.

Storm formation

The April storm event was significant for a number of reasons, said Shel Winkley, a meteorologist and a weather and climate engagement specialist for Climate Central. Not only was it one of the most intense spring rain events ever recorded for the region; by the end of the day on April 2, the NWS had issued 728 severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings — the third-most ever.

The region saw “relentless” rounds of storms April 3-6, dumping more than a foot of rain on some areas, Winkley said. These persistent storms were part of what is called a mesoscale convective system — a massive storm that is larger than an individual thunderstorm, but smaller than an extratropical cyclone.

While storms in Arkansas and the southeast tend to move west to east, a persistent “ridge” of near-record-high pressure settled east of Arkansas and the other affected states. According to Winkley, this high pressure area forced a low pressure system (thunderstorms, like tropical storms, are often associated with low pressure systems) to stall over Arkansas and the other states instead of continuing to move eastward.

The high pressure ridge caused warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico to be drawn into the lower levels of the storm, providing most of the fuel needed for the storms to continue to dump torrential rainfall for days, the analysis found.

The area where the high pressure and low pressure met — the “stalled front” — became the pathway that the rounds of storms travelled along, continually dumping rain on the same area for days because the front was stuck in place, he said.

Meanwhile, researchers said that while the states impacted by the rainfall event were not coastal states, the storm itself was helped along by historically warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico, which increased the amount of moisture in the atmosphere and drove the storms. 

Arkansas town hit hard by tornado making progress

According to Climate Central, the average temperature in Arkansas last month was 5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer, compared to its 30-year average. Rainfall, comparatively, was nearly 250% higher than average for the month.

Warmer temperatures and Gulf waters are contributing to more convective available potential energy (CAPE) days where there is sufficient instability and moisture in the atmosphere to spawn severe weather conditions, Winkley said. Northeast Arkansas, where the worst flooding occurred last month, in particular is seeing this trend, he said. 

An increase in CAPE days doesn’t necessarily mean there would be an increase in severe thunderstorms or tornadoes, just that the potential for those storms to form was occurring more frequently.

He did, however, say that when storms did form, they tended to be much more severe.

Arkansas has been hammered by severe weather in recent years. Numerous tornadoes devastated communities in 2023, 2024 and 2025, including in Little Rock, while severe river and flash flooding has occurred on multiple occasions in the last 12 months. June 2023 saw weeks of persistent severe weather, with damaging straight-line winds and hailstorms that dropped hailstones as large as four inches. 

While some federal assistance to respond to last month’s flooding was approved, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is appealing the Trump administration’s denial of assistance for those affected by an earlier round of storms in March. That line of storms spawned multiple violent tornadoes that tore through Cave City and other, smaller towns in the region. 

The denial of federal aid comes as the Trump administration debates eliminating FEMA, which has disbursed billions of federal aid in the wake of natural disasters to affected communities. Meanwhile, the administration announced Thursday that it would stop tracking the costs of the most expensive natural disasters.