Year Ago: Late Night Crest - KXNet - Bismarck/Minot/Williston/Dickinson

Year Ago: Late Night Crest

One year ago today, the Mouse River valley was awash in flood water.
It was late in the evening of June 25th, 2011 that the river crested in Minot - reaching an all-time high of 1561.66 feet.

That's more than three feet higher than the previous record hit in the year 1881 and more than six feet above the 1969 crest.
One that Saturday - concern grew about the walking bridge north of downtown that was acting as a dam and collecting debris.
Officials worked at removing the bridge but finally decided it could stay.
That's also the day that a severe thunderstorm rolled through - making some evacuees worry about what might happen at the dry homes in the area where homeowners were welcoming the displaced families.

(Deanna Syverson / Evacuated) "I know we're very welcome where we're at, I just feel bad imposing on people. For example, today with the bad weather, if we were to get a hail storm or something, their vehicles would be hailed out because they couldn't get in the garage because all my stuff is in there."

While there was no hail storm, there was a new cloud over the flooded valley - the possibility that the city water system had been infiltrated by untreated water.
We were told we had to boil water before consuming it - a requirement that lasted weeks.
June 25th, 2011 was also the day we got a first look at the devastation at Ramstad Middle School - we saw that the levee around the school had been breeched and the building was flooded.
And, the Souris Valley Animal Shelter opened up emergency shelters for flood victims to take their pets - a service that was provided for many weeks while the evacuations dragged on.

By 11pm on June 25th, the Mouse River had reached its high point for the flood - with a flow estimated at 27,400 cubic feet per second.