One Year Ago: Watching High Water - KXNet - Bismarck/Minot/Williston/Dickinson

One Year Ago: Watching High Water

We continue our look back at the spring and summer of 2011 today...
A year ago on June 8th, many thought the worst was over.  

The fear of the Mouse rising above its banks passed...and many were moving back home.
But lurking north of the border sat a wall of water, at a tipping point, and local officials were warning about it.
Reservoirs were basically at full capacity in Canada and just north of Minot at Lake Darling as well.
The plan was to bring down the level of those four reservoirs in a controlled way...thus lowering the threat level that still existed.
Minot's mayor Curt Zimbelman talked about the problems with long stretches of high water...

(Curt Zimbelman - Mayor of Minot) "We are getting into July now.  First part of July with these high levels and that is a concern.  It is that much longer we have to worry about a rain event that might come our way."  (Joshua Scheck, PhD - National Weather Service) "Looking back at the 75 record, it took about three weeks to draw all of the reservoirs down and that was with favorable rainfall, below average.  Seeing that we are still looking at above average precipitation, at least for the next few weeks, it will take longer probably with high flows to get the storage levels back in the system."

Of course the rain didn't let up...especially north of the border where an apparent downpour made massive releases necessary and thus triggering the worst flood in the history of the Mouse River Valley.