Heavy rain that produced some flash flooding in parts of the region Sunday evening led to the death of one person.
The Union County Sheriff's office says floodwaters swept away the vehicle of an unidentified woman on State Forest Road.
The woman's body was found a little after 7 a.m. near where the vehicle was located.
Although the Mississippi River is slowly falling after last week's crest, seep water in Alexander County is still rising.
Route 3 south of the Highway 146 intersection toward Gale and Thebes is closed due to water over the road. Route 3 north of the intersection remains one lane with portable stoplights controlling the traffic flow.
There is a slight improvement in the flooding situation in Jackson County.
Orval Rowe is the deputy coordinator of the county's emergency management agency. He says the Mississippi and Big Muddy Rivers are both falling a few tenths of an inch each day.
Rowe says they're closely watching for problems with sand boils on the Big Muddy Levee and others in Jackson County.
"There are still some small ones popping up. But, they're being monitored daily by the Corps of Engineers and also by the levee districts. They're being patrolled daily. So, we're staying on top of the ones that we've found so far."
Rowe says Jackson County has been somewhat fortunate so far considering the problems with continually rising seep water in Alexander County and the closing of the river bridge in Chester.
"Even when you have a bad day, you don't have to look very far down the road to see people having even worse days. We're happy with what we've got, just pretty much patrolling everything we have and keeping everybody as safe as possible."
He says some more positive news could happen later this week.
"Basically, we're shooting at 44 feet to re-open the Chester bridge, which I would think in the next day or two we'd see that. Barring some more heavy rain, sometime Saturday should be back down below 40 feet, which at Chester stage would be below major flood stage."
If current projections hold, Rowe says it'll be early July before the Mississippi River reaches the 27 foot flood stage, which hasn't happened in over three months.
