The Flood Today

No pictures today. The flood in Fargo has pretty much subsided. We are expecting another crest by friday. This time they have lowered it to 37 feet. Our first crest was 40.8 feet.
60 mioles west of us it is a whole different disaster. In Valley City they are expecting a crest 2 feet higher than the Sheyenne River has ever been there. Valley City officials have asked almost half of the town to evacuate.
The Sheyenne River is said to be 10 miles wide at places. There is alot of overland flooding going on.

The Red River Today

These pictures are from the main ave bridge that separates Fargo and Moorhead. The Red is now down 4 feet. It is expected to rise again next week when the 10.5 inches of snow we received starts to melt. The last crest got up to 40.82 feet. The new crest is hopefully only going to get to 37 or 38 feet. Flood stage is 18 feet.

The picture with the water tower, if you look in the middle of the picture. That is a stop sign sticking out of the water.

Whole Lot Of Dirt

How much dirt is needed to build 45 miles of dikes. A whole lot. The first picture here use to be a soccer field. The city began to run out of dirt so they dug up this soccer fields. The other two pictures are the backhoe's used to dig the trenches. When the flood is over they will rebuild the soccer fields.

The Wild Rice River

The Red river is now down 4 feet. This is the Wild Rice River and it is also way down. Three days ago you could not see the fence posts sticking out of the water.
The next picture is about 2 miles away. You can see how high the water was when it froze. When it dropped it left this sheet of ice hanging on the trees.

Just A Cool Picture

This picture really has nothing to do with the flood. It is just a cool picture that I took from our main avenue bridge where I have posted several pictures from during the flood. It is one of those pictures you get totally by accident.

Here We Go Again

The Red River has dropped over two feet and is now at 38.8 feet which is still 20 feet above flood stage. Now that the river has dropped two feet, they are now letting some people back into their homes and neighborhoods. So just as things are looking up, what you see in these pictures is what we are receiving now. We could get possibly 8 inches of snow before Wednesday.

We have the Coast Guard here that have actually rescued people by airboat and helicopter. People are still in their houses surrounded by water fighting to save their homes. We have towns that are almost completely shut off from the rest of the world.

With all this snow the river will definetly come up again. They are expecting the river to crest again in April when all this snow starts to melt. At one point a few days ago we had no snow.

The Flood Today

I have no new pictures. I will just try to give you a picture of what is going on here today with words.
Our river is going down. Many people would like to think that the river has crested and that we are out of the woods now. Not true. We have alot of snow to melt yet, and more snow on the way. As much as 6 inches and more to the south. The cold weather has been a Godsend.
All the dikes are built and now we are in stand and defend mode.
This morning at 1:25 am Oak Grove School dike was breeched, within minutes, 4 teams of the National Guard rapid respones team was on site, as was Army Corp of Engineers and the city. They did lose two buildings, and even though they lost 2 it could have been much worse if not for the planning between all the agencies that are here. They were having a hard time getting it stopped. If there is a breech, they now have thousand pound sandbags that are dropped from helicopters to help stop the leak.
We still have alot of water to the south and to the north of us. Harwood which is just north of us is now basically cut off from the rest of the world except for one road that is a major detour out of that city.
We are not out of this. The water is expected to stay at this level for a another week.

Lost Cabinet

As we were standing on the bridge. Here came a cabinet that someone will be missing.

The Road Under Main Avenue Bridge

These pictures are from under the main avenue bridge on March 22. This is where we were taking the pictures today March 28. This Road is now under 22 feet of water.

Woodlawn Park

This is Woodlawn Park. We are looking at this park on the Minnesota side of the river. We are standing on the main ave bridge. Pictures are over the last 4 days

The Red River Today

These are more pictures from the main ave bridge. These pics are from the past four days. The water is getting so high.

We do have good news. With the cold weather the river has now dropped about 2 inches. The other news is we are suppose to get more snow on Monday, but we have alot of snow yet to melt.

The bad news is all that melt will have to come down the Red River Yet.

Red River

These are pictures from the downtown main ave bridge looking west. The first picture is from the 23rd. Second picture from the 24th and the third from today. No explanation needed.

The Red River Today

The first picture was taken March 14. Kids are using the dike to sled. The second picture is taken east of the first picture.

Drain 27

For those of you who have not seen drain 27 yet, this is the canal that runs roughly 2 blocks from our house and surrounds us on two sides. The dike is now finished and it is set to take a 43 foot crest.

The Flood Today

These pictures are from March 24th and 26th. They are pictures of a farmstead 2 miles south of the Wild Rice River. The first picture shows the farmstead on March 24, no water. The next picture is two days later and it is surrounded by water. Yes, that is water right up to the buildings.

Today the weather has turned cold. Tonight it is suppose to get down to zero. I never thought that the weather man would say the low tonite is zero and I would reply,(Thank God). We need the cold to slow the Red River down. The river is suppose to crest tomorrow at anywhere from 41.5 to 42 feet crest. Right now it is sitting at 40.8 feet (flood stage is 18 feet). The rise of the river has slowed down dramatically. Once we reach the crest it may stay high for 3 to 7 days. It is not so much if the dikes can take the high water, but can they take all that pressure for that long.

This the city of Fargo and all of our volunteers since monday have bagged over 3 million sandbags. In the last 24 hours there have been many evacuations of neighborhoods in and outside of the cuty. Dikes have not been breeched, but we ar in uncharted waters. The flood of 1997 reached 39.5 feet. So in all true actuallity we really do not know what is going to happen.

Fargo Flood Pics 2009 (South of Fargo)

These photos are NOT lakes or beaches. This is ALL farmland south of Fargo under a whole lot of flood water.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090327/ap_on_re_us/midwest_flooding