Still Flooding, they are going to lose the battle

[Frosty]

Quote:
They couldn't move trailers in until the flooding is over, after all. So I hope that's the situation - they're waiting to see what's needed and where's a dry place to put them.

Hope everyone there is safe!

There are dry spots to put them, it's the valley that is flooding. While the ground is wet everywhere, at least there isn't standing water everywhere. Apparently they need to do research on available housing first. Which there is very little of, there is an oil boom up here and we have a 2% unemployment rate. A lot of places have trouble filling available jobs.

I am including a few links to our news stations facebook page if anyonr wants to see them.

This is what the river is supposed to look like
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150215374425283&set=o.113338562042681&type=1&theater

Here is what it's doing
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150227114152005&set=o.113338562042681&type=1&theater
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=242907119068275&set=o.113338562042681&type=1&theater
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1971774508367&set=o.113338562042681&type=1&theater
This one shows the dyke that is doing a good job of holding the water back
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=242938919065095&set=o.113338562042681&type=1&theater
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=225302604169455&set=o.113338562042681&type=1&theater

Here is the highway between us and Minot, the feedstore is on the other side from here
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2060714567506&set=o.113338562042681&type=1&theater

The river is supposed to crest I think around 8 PM tonight, then will hold for 5 to 7 days before it will hopefully start to drop. This was all set in motion because Canada was keeping their releases as low as possible from 3 dams up there to try not to flood anyone too bad. Then they got 4-6 inches of rain throughout the river valley, totally unexpected. That pushed the reservoirs too high and they had to release water. As the days went by, the amount needed to be released kept going up. We have a dam upstream of the town, but it was also pushing it's limits so they had to start releasing, too. They started as soon as they got word on the releases from Canada which gave them a few days to get the level in our reservoir down a bit. That way we had a little extra room to take the brunt of the flow from the north or it would have been even worse. The flow coming in to ND is 28,000 cfs, our dam is releasing about 25,400 cfs. The river is currently about 21 feet above the level we should be seeing, and is forecast to go up a few more feet before it levels off.

The folks along the Missouri are getting flooded, too. The reservoirs that we have for that river are also at capacity so the releases have had to be raised. If they don't release the water, it will hit the spillway and there will be uncontrolled releases. It is also risky because then the dam is above capacity, and could just fail. Then you would have really catastrophic flooding.

 

[Frosty]

If the river drops 2 more feet, it will be below flood stage. There are about 21,000 homes that are severely or totally damaged. A lot of folks still can't get to their homes yet. There are sink holes in a bunch of the roads, and the one road that was the only road open to connect the north and south parts of the town is closed now that the water dropped enough for them to see that the water eroded the bridge support away. Fortunately, the dike to protect the main road through town did it's job so they were able to open that road to traffic.

FEMA has approved 8 counties for assistance so far, and they are saying that they will provide some trailers. In addition, they are having the trailers outfitted for the winters up here. So far they only found a location for 300 trailers.

They were planning to go ahead with the State Fair which is in Minot, but were planning to not have the 'competitive' evens since all of the barns were flooded. Then we got 2.5" of rain and the riverr was dropping slower than anticipated so the fair has been cancelled. I feel bad for the vendors who were counting on that income.

There are about 6 million acres that never got planted up here, and some that did got flooded after. I sell veggies at a local farm market and one lady said she planted her garden 3 times but it kept getting flooded out. And she doesn't even live near the river. Just a tough year for these folks...