River flood stages are rising -- but not the rivers themselves

The National Weather Service has announced plans to change their definitions of flood stages at a bunch of central Iowa locations. Most of the changes will raise the levels required to activate different flood stages, so the same river level will be less likely to trigger a flood warning in the future than it had in the past. The official word on this is that it should reduce rather considerably the number of flood warnings issued by the Des Moines office.