Peoria gets flooded

Parts of the downtown area were under several meters of water, and that also played out in other towns along the river as the floodwaters slowly made their way downstream.

"The last record was 1943 and it broke all of those," said Mike Zerbonia, operations manager for the Army Corps of Engineers on the Illinois River. His office was a casualty of the high waters. He said one immediate impact of the flooding is the interruption of shipping.

"Scrap steel, grain, coal, concrete, and we can’t move any of it now. Because of the high water, the river is shut down," said Zerbonia.

"If we have trouble moving grains down the river, if that slows down, it affects prices that we can get, mostly because the price of transportation gets higher because they can’t haul as much," said Kammeyer.

Upside to rain

But there is a silver lining to the storm clouds that caused the flooding, said grains analyst Ken Smithmier.

"I think the market sentiment is more of a ‘well, we need the rain.’ It’s been fantastic, we’ve improved drought conditions. But we need to get planters rolling in the field. We’re well behind the average place of planting at this point in the crop year," said Smithmier.

"Right now we’re going to be two to three weeks behind," said Kammeyer. He is looking ahead, to when his fields are dry enough that he can start planting. He hopes this season brings greater crop yields… fueled by just the right amount of rain.