Graphic: Almost every home in the city of Palo, Iowa was under water after the 2008 floods. A new early warning system of water and rain gauges along the Cedar River Basin provides information that will help Palo better prepare for potential flooding events,.

Dan Ceynar, The Iowa Flood Center: 

Well one if the issues with the water shed that is flooding

flooding Palo is you don't know how much water is coming

or how fast it is coming. there is a time component to up the

hill in Atkins there is a dry creek that runs down here to Palo

which causes a lot of flash flooding and uh it is far enough 

away approximately five to seven miles away or so that they

could get a downpour up there a large amount of rain dropping

drop down into that water shed which we have a map of the 

digital water shed that we are working on at the Iowa

Flood Center.  And so that uh pulse of water is coming

down through the water shed and is gonna hit Palo

and uh we have a rain gauge just like this set up

there that transmits in almost real time every

15 minutes to a data base where and other gauges

in our network where you can see the rain event

moving in and know how much rain actually fell

in your watershed to give you a little bit of time

to try to prepare for it if you have uh some sort

of uh gates or something that you implemented

to control how your storm water is running around town

it will give you time to know what you might want to do

with those gates.  Maybe you need to open some 

because there is too much rain coming for your basin

maybe you need to close some up because you think

you can hold it back.  so it is just one component of

trying to understand the whole picture along with

uh inundation mapping and uh understanding the 

water cycle soil moisture which is another 

component of these platforms. Uh it

is just another tool to gather the information

to under to try to be proactive as much as you

can and also react to the variabilities in a rain

event that may fall.

www.fema.gov