In North Dakota, at least in my lifetime, all flooding west of the Red River is compared to the Great Flood of 1969.  That year, pretty much every major town in the state – Fargo, Grand Forks, Jamestown, Minot, Bismarck – was inundated with runoff from record snow and rain falls.  It was the standard by which all subsequent floods – 1981, 1997, and the past couple of years along the Red, Missouri and James – have been measured.

And none of those floods, not even 1969, holds a candle to what’s projected for Minot – where my mother, incidentally, lives, although thankfully on very high ground – and other communities along the Souris River in coming weeks.

The highest flows ever recorded on the Souris are approaching a city whose defenses are destined to be over run. Can the city hold?

Dikes currently in place, recently improved greatly to combat high flows, are now expected to disappear under the traveling torrent. The amount of water flowing with a vengeance down the Souris River Valley is forecast to inundate Minot to a level seven to eight feet higher than the catastrophic and benchmark flood of 1969.

Picture a flood eight feet higher than the highest flooding ever recorded in your riverfront town.  Eight feet.

Saddened with that horrific knowledge, officials announced during a late afternoon press conference Monday that very little can be done to stop the powerful onslaught. Massive secondary dikes that were built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to save much of the town from the previous high on the Souris this year fall far short of defending against the impending and rapid rise of the Souris.

My mom’s house is already crowded with refugees from the earlier flooding.  It’s going to get worse:

Mandatory evacuations were ordered Monday for all evacuation zones within Minot. Mayor Curt Zimbelman said all affected residents and businesses must vacate those areas no later than 10 p.m. Wednesday. Within minutes of the announcement residents once again began the laborious and hastened work of moving out of their homes for the second time this year.

“It’s a sad day in Minot,” Zimbelman said at the end of a press conference Monday.

Although Minot was always Jamestown’s hereditary sports rival – cake-eating bastards that they were –  my prayers do go out to them.  This sounds just awful, with water flows triple that of this spring’s already-bad floods:

“It’s pretty easy to get to 23,000 cfs, which is bearing down on Sherwood as we speak,” said Alan Schlag, Monday. Schlag is a hydrologist for the National Weather Service in Bismarck.

For comparison purposes, the previous peak flow at Sherwood this year, one which caused great concern at all points downstream, was a mere 8,860 cfs.

“Basically, Canada is pouring the coals to releases from dams. Rafferty is wide open, Alameda upped to 1,800 Monday and Boundary was at about 5,000 cfs,” said Schlag.

How bad is it?  Bad enough to get a roomful of North Dakotans – classic Scandinavian and German passive-aggressives (I can say that, I’m one of ’em) who let loose in full pent-up fury that’d shame a roomful of big-haired Long-Island Italans when dealing with government at any level – to sit down in a daze:

The crowd at Monday’s City Hall press conference sat in stunned silence, followed by a few brief murmurs, when it was revealed that releases into the Souris from Lake Darling Dam would be ramped up to “16 or 17,000 cfs by Thursday.” Minot’s existing dike system laborously protects against 10,000 cfs. The previous high release for Lake Darling prior to this flood event was less than 5,000 cfs. Numbers all along the Souris are similarly stunning, shocking and, ultimately, saddening.

I’d been planning on going there this summer.  Sounds like I’d best bring boots and a shovel.

Via the NWS, there’s a storm brewing over God’s Country:

COLDER AIR MOVING SOUTHEAST FROM SASKATCHEWAN WILL RESULT IN RAIN CHANGING OVER TO ALL SNOW OVER WESTERN NORTH DAKOTA THIS MORNING AND THEN OVER NORTH CENTRAL NORTH DAKOTA BY AFTERNOON. THE COLDER AIR WILL REACH CENTRAL AND SOUTHERN NORTH DAKOTA BY THIS EVENING.

THE PRECIPITATION WILL BE IN THE FORM OF ALL SNOW TONIGHT THROUGH WEDNESDAY ACROSS ALL OF WESTERN AND CENTRAL NORTH DAKOTA.

THE COMBINATION OF THE VERY STRONG WINDS COINCIDING WITH PERSISTENT FALLING SNOW WILL RESULT IN VERY LOW VISIBILITIES.

THUS A BLIZZARD WARNING HAS BEEN ISSUED FOR ALL OF WESTERN AND CENTRAL NORTH DAKOTA WITH THE EXCEPTION OF SOUTHWEST NORTH DAKOTA.

ANTICIPATED SNOWFALL AMOUNTS WILL BE HIGHER FOR THOSE AREAS MAINLY NORTH AND EAST OF THE MISSOURI RIVER. BY WEDNESDAYAFTERNOON…THE HIGHEST SNOWFALL AMOUNTS WILL RESIDE OVER FAR NORTH CENTRAL NORTH DAKOTA ACROSS THE TURTLE MOUNTAINS WHERE 10 INCHES OR MORE OF SNOW IS POSSIBLE. FROM MINOT TO HARVEY AND INTO CARRINGTON EXPECT 4 TO 8 INCHES OF SNOW. 2 TO 4 INCHES OF SNOW IS POSSIBLE ALONG A LINE FROM WILLISTON TO GARRISON…BISMARCK TO JAMESTOWN AND SOUTH TO WISHEK TO ELLENDALE. 1 TO 3 INCHES OF SNOW IS LIKELY WEST OF THE MISSOURI RIVER.

Hopefully it stalls over the Red River and doesn’t arrive in Minnesota ’til Tuesday.

Meanwhile back in my hometown of Jamestown, ND, they’re getting ready for more flooding, as the two reservoirs north of town fill to records.

Now, Jamestown is built at the confluence of the James River – the world’s longest non-commercially-navigable river – and Pipestem Creek.  Both rivers drain a huge basin in central North Dakota (and South Dakota as well) into the Missouri River.  Given their huge watershed, both rivers are fairly sensitive to fluctuations in water supply; in the eighties, during a very dry period, the James barely flowed.  On other other hand, before the James was dammed up in the ’50s, a wet season could leave Jamestown half-submerged. (The Pipestem also flooded, in 1969, leading to another dam in the seventies).  So in theory, Jamestown should be flood-proof – unless it’s been a very wet winter and both reservoirs are nearly full.

Suffice to say it’s been a very wet winter:

Jamestown and Stutsman County should prepare for the same combined releases as they did during the 2009 floods, according to the Army Corps of Engineers, which changed its forecast for the James River and Pipestem Creek Friday.

The corps’ had originally estimated releases of 1,800 cubic feet per second. The new forecast recommends building emergency levees to handle combined releases of 3,200 cfs from Jamestown and Pipestem reser-voirs — the same level the two dams released at the peaks of the 2009 flood.

1,800 to 3,200 cubic feet per second.  Bear in mind the usual combined release from both dams is about 30 cfs.

According to the corps, the 0.5 to 1.5 inches of precipitation received in the James River Basin this week changed the situation and now reservoir pool levels could exceed 1997 levels, according to the “most likely” forecasts. The upper range of forecasts indicate reservoir pool levels could reach the same levels as in 2009, said Col. Robert J. Ruch, Omaha district commander for the corps.

It’s going to be another flood-prone year throughout the upper Midwest.

A high school classmate of mine who lives in the “exurbs” north of Fargo writes:

Just a note that if you’re interested in listening to local flood coverage in Fargo, below is a link.My daughter is out again sandbagging today.Many volunteers and homehowners are exhausted, many others still eager. Keep them in your thoughts and prayers.Thanks – [redacted]

Wish I could get up there.  I’m banking energy and vacation time in case Saint Paul and Newport flood again.

This one blows my mind; all you Jamestown natives who read the blog will get it.

On Tuesday, the city’s airport was closed due to flooding:

The airport is on the high ground.  The airport remains closed to fixed-wing planes today.

This, just in time for the blizzard, as the flooding in the lowlands of the James Valley (which I wrote about yesterday) kicks off.

And it is kicking off in earnest; apparently the “worst case” forecasts show both the Jametown and Pipestem dams rising to within a foot of their emergency spillways, even as the Army Corps of Engineers increases outflows from the dams to compensate for the recent rain and massive melt-off.  Over that level, and the dams’ll release directly into the rivers without any regulation, pushing the normally-sluggish (and already-swollen) James way over its normally-ample banks.  The Corps of Engineers is working on building temporary dikes, and  sandbagging is reportedly underway.

(Via It’s Good To Be In N.D. the only Jamestown-centered blog I can find)

A few weeks ago, I noted the 43rd anniversary of the greatest blizzard of my lifetime, the Great North Dakota Blizzard of ’66. 

Of course, all that snow had to go somewhere.

The Army Corps of Engineers had put up a dam on the James River – the longest un-navigable river in the world – in the fifties, which put a stop to the frequent floods that had plagued the city when that shallow, muddy river had gotten even the faintest surge of water.  But Pipestem Creek – which joins the James in Klaus Park, on the west side of Jamestown, under the Fort Seward bluffs, a place that was the city’s original reason to exist since its days as an Arikara camp since time immemorial – had no dam at the time.  And so the spring runoff pushed the Pipestem – and the James, south of the confluence – over their banks.

I was three at the time.  Dad spent a couple of nights sandbagging.  I remember worried conversations about the sandbag line protecting downtown (also our neighborhood, although our house was on higher ground) being more fragile than people would have liked.

And best of all?  I remember the National Guard putting its command post or supply dump or something across the street from our house, in the yard in front of Trinity Hospital.  Skids of sandbags, trucks full of sand, front-end loaders and, best of all, an amphibious DUKW “Duck” truck congregated there, with streams of guys coming and going at all hours. 

A few years later, the Corps finished a dam over the Pipestem.  And that was the last flood Jamestown saw.

Until now. The immense snowfall this year – more than the usually-dry state, more famous for wind than snow, has seen in a generation – is causing flooding even in Jamestown.

Of course, as a blizzard pounds the state, the flooding is everywhere.  An ice dam on the Missouri River, at its confluence with the Heart River, is  hbacking up water into Bismarck and Mandan.  The National Guard and, believe it or not, the Coast Guard tried to blow the jam open earlier today; we’ll wait to see what happens.  In the meantime, another huge ice jam north of the city threatens to let spill another deluge into Bismarck.

Of course, Fargo is frantically sandbagging against a crest that is  supposed to be higher than 1997’s epic flood; in Grand Forks, which was largely destroyed in ’97, the crest is expected to be competitive with the epic of 12 years ago.

All the while, a blizzard is thrashing the state.

There are times I miss the place.  I wish I could be there now.

…are greatly exaggerated:

The North Dakota Department of Transportation announced on Tuesday afternoon that the westbound lane of Interstate 94 from Mandan to Dickinson will remain closed tonight through Wednesday morning until the road can be cleared. Blowing and drifting snow with heavy accumulation will continue to create hazardous driving conditions in the westbound lane throughout the afternoon and evening.

At this time, the eastbound lane of Interstate 94 from Dickinson to Mandan will remain open but will remain under a No Travel Advisory, unless conditions continue to deteriorate. Motorists should be alert to changing conditions.

I love the smell of freeway closures in February.

Smells like…

…real winter!