Minot Flooding Continues

From Accuweather.com:

June 24 update
The river rose another foot since Thursday morning, putting the water just a foot away from the record set in 1881.

The water levels of the Souris River upstream from Minot at Sherwood have stayed steady since Thursday.

June 23, 2011

Problems continue in Minot, N.D., late this week as river levels keep rising.

Thursday morning, the Souris River at Minot was more than 6 feet above its normal level. The river water needs to rise only 2 more feet to beat the historical record set in 1881.

Likely, the flooding will break the record. National Weather Service data predicts that waters could rise another 7 feet by Monday.
The river crested upstream from Minot at Sherwood Thursday morning.

The National Guard helped evacuate around 10,000 residents of the town yesterday, a quarter of the people that live there.

The flooding along the Souris River is separate from the Missouri River flooding. The Souris River flows southward from Saskatchewan, Canada into North Dakota then loops around into southern Manitoba, Canada, sending water toward Winnipeg.

Above-normal rainfall across Saskatchewan and North Dakota caused the flooding, and heavy spring snowmelt also contributed.

Estevan, Saskatchewan, located upstream along the Souris, has received more than double the yearly rainfall in the past six months.

The Mouse River at Sherwood, N.D., located upstream from Minot, already surpassed the record flood stage by more than a foot. According to the Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service, the depth of the river at Sherwood covers the entire surrounding valley with floodwater.


In order to mitigate the flooding downstream, the Army Corps of Engineers has been releasing water at Lake Darling Reservoir at a rate of approximately 8,000 cubic feet per second. The rate of outflow of water will increase over the next couple of days, enough so that Lake Darling may be emptied.


Even with these attempts to lessen the impacts of flooding, the river is expected to rise a couple of feet above the record flood stage of 38 feet at Minot.