Weekend storm in North Dakota ratchets up spring flooding fears along Red
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 30/12/2019 (2456 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
As North Dakota cleaned up Monday from a weekend storm that dumped upwards of 45 centimetres of snow on parts of the state, a U.S. meteorologist said conditions are ripe for a big spring flood along the Red River.
Greg Gust, warning co-ordination meteorologist with the U.S. National Weather Service in Grand Forks, said 2019 is the wettest year on record in his city.
And while he has yet to complete the analysis, the period since Sept. 1 is the wettest in at least three decades along the northern portions of the Red River on the U.S. side of the border, he said.
The 104 centimetres (41 inches) of snow that has fallen at Grand Forks so far this season is not a record, but has blanketed already saturated soils, Gust said.
About 30 centimetres of that snow from an October storm has melted, but much of the resulting water froze in fields before it could drain into the river.
“That just means that you have parked water that is ready to go (when spring arrives),” Gust said.
He said he agrees with flood forecasters in Manitoba that several factors — particularly the rate of next spring’s snow melt — could mitigate against a big 2020 flood.
However, he noted that the 2019 spring flood along portions of the Red River south of the border was the sixth largest ever, and “right now we’re setting up to be potentially worse than that.”
Ed Dykes, a meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada, said much of southern Manitoba, including the city of Winnipeg, received between five and 10 centimetres of snow Sunday and Monday.
Unlike Grand Forks, Winnipeg did not set an annual precipitation record in 2019. The city received about 25 to 50 millimetres of precipitation (rain equivalent) more than normal this year, he said.
However, the 250 millimetres of precipitation since Sept. 1, is 150 to 200 per cent above average for that period, he said.
Precipitation on both sides of the border was so great in the fall the province was forced to activate the Red River Floodway for 29 days between Oct. 9 and Nov. 7.
It was the latest point in a year that the floodway has been used in its 50-year history.
larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca