Record-breaking flood levels anticipated in parts of US

Heavy rainfall, flooding and tornado outbreaks affected areas of the US from the Southwest through the Midwest from Dec 23-27

Several locations along the Mississippi river from St. Louis down to the delta are anticipating major flooding, possibly even breaking record flood levels, the US National Weather Service said.

Extreme weather has affected the US over the past few days and residual flooding and/or the threat for flooding will persist from Oklahoma to Illinois, the weather service said on Tuesday.

Heavy rainfall, flooding and tornado outbreaks affected areas of the US from the Southwest through the Midwest from December 23-December 27.

NASA's Global Precipitation Measurement or GPM mission core satellite analysed extreme weather that affected the US over the course of five days.

GPM is an international satellite mission between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency to provide next-generation observations of rain and snow worldwide every three hours.

An analysis was made of the rainfall that occurred during the period from December 21 to December 28.

The analysis used data generated by NASA's Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM (IMERG).

This analysis showed that during the past week the highest rainfall totals of almost 938 mm (36.8 inches) were measured by IMERG in the state of Alabama.

The powerful thunderstorm that moved from northern Mississippi into Tennessee generated two tornadoes. Fourteen deaths alone occurred with tornadoes that hit Benton, Mississippi on December 23, NASA said.