The highest flows ever recorded on the Souris are approaching a city whose defenses are destined to be over run. Can the city hold?<\/p>\n
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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Picture a flood eight feet <\/em>higher than the highest flooding ever recorded in your <\/em>riverfront town. \u00a0Eight feet. <\/em><\/p>\nSaddened 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
My mom’s house is already crowded with refugees from the earlier flooding. \u00a0It’s going to get worse:<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“It’s a sad day in Minot,” Zimbelman said at the end of a press conference Monday.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Although Minot was always Jamestown’s hereditary sports rival – cake-eating bastards that they were – \u00a0my prayers do go out to them. \u00a0This sounds just awful, with water flows triple <\/em>that of this spring’s already-bad floods:<\/p>\n“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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
How bad is it? \u00a0Bad 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:<\/p>\n
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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I’d been planning on going there this summer. \u00a0Sounds like I’d best bring boots and a shovel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In North Dakota, at least in my lifetime, all flooding west of the Red River is compared to the Great Flood of 1969. \u00a0That 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. \u00a0It was the standard […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-five-ate-for-oh-won","category-midwest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20672"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20674,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20672\/revisions\/20674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}