First, some good news. It looks like the 2010 flood won’t be as bad as the 2009 flood. The National Weather Service has lowered its estimate of the expected crest from 38 feet to 37.5 feet. Last year, the river crested at just under 41 feet. Flood stage is 18 feet.
Plus, the weather got cold on Friday. I just checked the internet – the low on Friday night was 16 degrees and the temp this morning was 24. This is very good because it means one thing: snow is not melting. The absolutely worst thing would be warm weather and rain.
People have erected sandbag dikes all through Fargo and Moorhead in the areas bordering the river. And there are extra sandbags stored in heated warehouses in case of a break. The sandbags have to be kept warm because a frozen sandbag won’t fill in the gaps and fit correctly when it’s tossed on top of a dike.
The two Republican governors have declared flood emergencies. Gov. Hoeven (ND) declared an emergency on Feb. 26. It took Gov. Pawlenty (MN) a little longer. He declared an emergency a few days ago on Mar. 15. An emergency declaration allows them to mobilize the National Guard and get help from FEMA. Even Republicans believe in big government when there’s an emergency.
More below.
Some background now. Here’s a map of the Red River drainage basin (Note: The Red River flows north to Canada):
Here’s a list of the worst Red River floods (in recorded history):
(1) 40.84 ft on March 28, 2009
(2) 40.10 ft on April 7, 1897
(3) 39.57 ft on April 17, 1997
(4) 37.80 ft on April 11, 1882
--> 37.5? 2010?
(5) 37.34 ft on April 15, 1969
(6) 37.13 ft on April 5, 2006
(7) 36.69 ft on April 14, 2001
If the river crests at 37.5, the 2010 flood will be #5 on the list. And it means five of the eight worst floods will have occurred since 1997. Climate change, anyone?
The U.S. Geological Service (USGS) has a website (Red River at Fargo, ND) that tracks the river’s level. Here’s the latest graph. Note that the floods are coming earlier and earlier. Climate change, anyone?
According to the Fargo newspaper (here – warning, you have to sign up to read it), this year the area had just an average amount of snow.
We have received 46.6 inches of snow so far this winter, almost exactly equal to the 30-year average of 46.7 inches.
The 1997 flood, which sent us a flood stage of 39.57 feet, came from a winter snowfall of 117 inches.
Last year’s flood reached 40.84 feet, but the winter snowfall was 79.7 inches, and about 18 inches of that fell near or after the crest and did not melt until later and so played no part in the flood.
The Geography
I’m going to repeat some comments I've made in a previous diary.
1. It's very flat there. The ice-age glaciers melted about 12,000 years ago, forming Lake Agassiz (bigger than California, bigger than all five Great Lakes combined). Silt built up on the lakebed for 3,000 years, until about 9,000 years ago. The land is extremely flat because it used to be the bottom of a lake. During the summer, the river moves very slowly and meanders back and forth.
2. There's no valley to speak of. It took the Colorado River six million years to carve out the Grand Canyon. Parts of the Mississippi have been around for hundreds of thousands of years. The Red River is only about 9,000 years old.
3. The floodplain is gigantic. Minnesota Public Radio did an interview with a geologist from NDSU who said the Ohio River might have a floodplain of thousands of yards, but the Red River's floodplain can be a hundred miles wide in parts. You can't tell people to move out of the floodplain. And you can't build levees everywhere.
4. It's all about the snowmelt. During the winter, snow piles up everywhere. If the snow melts too quickly, there's a flood. Farmers almost everywhere have standing water in low-lying parts of their fields. The earth gets totally soaked with water, whether or not there's pavement anywhere. Trust me, the problem isn't too much pavement.
And, by the way, Bismarck floods aren't connected to Fargo floods. They're both in ND, but Bismarck is on the Missouri River, which flows south to Missouri and then New Orleans. Fargo is on the Red, which flows north to Winnipeg, Canada.
Here’s what Wikipedia says about the drainage basin of the Red River:
It is remarkably flat; from its origin near Breckenridge, Minnesota to the international border near Emerson, Manitoba, its gradient is only about 1:5000, or approximately 1 foot per mile. The river, slow and small in most seasons, does not have the energy to cut a gorge. Instead it meanders across the silty bottomlands in its progress north. In consequence, high water has nowhere to go, except to spread across the old lakebed in "overland flooding". Heavy snows or rains, on saturated or frozen soil, has caused a number of catastrophic floods, which often are made worse by the fact that snowmelt starts in the warmer south, and waters flowing northward are often dammed or slowed by ice.
A note about me: I grew up in Fargo/Moorhead and, except for eighth grade, went to school there from kindergarten through high school graduation. I remember well the 1969 flood. I was 12 years old, just old enough to help neighbors pile up sandbags. Hundreds and hundreds of sandbags.
I’m in Seattle now, but I still have friends and family in the area. I have a brother in Dilworth (a small town that’s sort of a suburb of Moorhead) and a sister who’s married to a sugar beet farmer on the Minnesota side of the river. I’ve always thought it was odd that my sister has type two diabetes and one of her daughters has type one diabetes and yet their family grows sugar beets. My sister has a job in Fargo. She normally has a 23-mile commute each direction. Last year, she had to drive 10-15 miles out of her way because of bridges and roads being closed.
And that’s it. I know everyone’s thinking about the upcoming HCR vote, but I thought I’d keep people up to date on the Red River situation.