Rising waters...

As if most of you haven't heard already, the Red River is continuing its rise here in the Valley with record crests expected in Fargo and points near there. Downstream, here in Grand Forks, our forecasted crest has once again been adjusted upward some.

The heavy, wet snowfall we received last evening has slowed the rise of the water over the past 12-24 hours, but as of 11:30 pm we are at 44.81 feet.

The cold temperatures this week may also impede the rise somewhat, as well, however there is still a lot of water down in Fargo that will be making its way up here.

I was down at the river Tuesday afternoon to get a good look at the river and to take a few photos. If you are interested in seeing these, I have posted them in my Photo Gallery. I was down there once again this afternoon and will have additional photos in the Gallery tomorrow night.

The city has a call out for volunteers for sandbagging parts of southern Grand Forks, so I may be doing that tomorrow evening. If you live around the area, we definitely need the help.

Be safe!

NCRFC Forecast

Greetings folks,

In accordance to my status as an employee at Meridian, I do need to be a little careful at what I say and write about on the blog here regarding the flood forecasts. So, first off, I want to apologize for anyone coming here to find any kind of forecast from me. All I will provide from here on out will be only be opinions and/or criticisms. The latter, only if need be, of course! Hah!

Anyhow, I figured I would provide a link to the official forecasts from the North Central River Forecast Center for the East Grand Forks, MN forecast point on the Red River:

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/ahps2/hydrograph.php?wfo=fgf&gage=egfm5&view=1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1&toggles=10,7,8,2,9,15,6

From this first page, you can view the current stage of the river, as well as, historical crests and impacts at various stages of the river, if you scroll down the page.

If you click on the "Chance of Exceeding Levels During Entire Period" tab at the top, it will bring up a graph of the forecast crests the NCRFC is forecasting and the probabilities for each during the period. The 50-60 percentile is basically the threshold for concern, since at this point, we're looking at a fairly respectable chance of seeing a crest at that stage.

As you may see, the 50-60 percentile falls very near a 50 foot crest. Which would make it the 2nd or 3rd highest crest on record. Obviously, this highly depends on weather conditions over the next couple of weeks. If we would happen to get additional precipitation, for instance, significant changes could occur to these numbers.

Again, for interests in the Valley, please keep this link handy - and check up on it, at least every other day or so. Especially, over the course of the next week, as warmer temperatures expected to push in will quickly melt our snow-cover.

This will continue the wet, slushy mess out there on the roads during the day and refreezing issues at night.

Record flooding?

Hello folks,

It's been a little while since I wrote last, and considering I've been out celebrating a co-worker's birthday this evening and the fact I have to be up in 5-4 hours for work, I will keep this rather short.

For those of you here in the Red River Valley, you may want to seriously consider checking into flood insurance, especially if you live within the first 5 miles of the Red River. The reason?

The NWSFO out of Grand Forks released their latest forecast just yesterday for the Red River Valley, and many locations along the river may see major flooding by mid-April.

In fact, here are the probabilities that river stages could exceed the record 1997 stages:

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/news/display_cmsstory.php?wfo=fgf&storyid=23149&source=0

It's pretty clear that many locations along the Red River will see near to close to record stages by early-mid April.

This could potentially lead to catastrophic flooding for the Red River valley, including the Grand Forks area. We'll have to see how much more snow (or rain, for that matter) occurs here in the local area to see exactly how bad things may get. Until then, keep updated!

I'll try to keep abreast of any significant changes to the forecasts and will pass these along.

Edit: 03.15.2009 @ 11:18 PM CST