The Red River Sunday had started a gradual decline in the Fargo-Moorhead area after reaching a preliminary crest at the fourth-highest level on record with rain storms coming in lighter than expected.
“This rain will not have a huge effect on (the crest), it will just maintain a very, very slow fall,” said Jim Scarlett, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
The Red River rose rapidly last week and appeared ready to threaten the 40.84 foot record crest at Fargo of two years ago. However, the rise had slowed considerably by Saturday.
The weather service said the river reached a preliminary crest in the Fargo-Moorhead area at 38.5 feet Saturday night with prolonged flooding expected, but dipped more than two inches by Sunday afternoon to about 38.5 feet .
It was expected to stay above 37 feet until Thursday afternoon.
Miles of temporary barriers and reinforced dikes protect Fargo and Moorhead, Minnesota. Hundreds of volunteers and National Guard troops have patrolled the flood defenses for days and no significant breaches of have been reported.
“We will have some pretty significant high critical stages for a while now,” said Tim Bertschi, flood area engineer for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the Fargo-Moorhead area.
“We are monitoring and doing a little remedial actions to make sure that any signs of distress on the levees are addressed immediately,” he said Sunday.
Lessons learned in the past two years, and the crest coming to the Fargo-Moorhead area two weeks later, have helped in the fight this year, officials said. Flooding in areas north of the cities has been worse in many cases than it was in 2009.
“Things are pretty rough in the county,” North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple said of stretches of Cass County where Fargo is located. “We have 60 miles of roads closed and we have another 10 miles of roads being washed over in sections.”
Manitoba Prepared
A crest in Fargo still means weeks of waiting and watching as the Red River recedes, followed by a similar process from Grand Forks through to Winnipeg, the capital of the Canadian province of Manitoba.
Hundreds of volunteers helped on Sunday with sandbagging in Winnipeg, but residents of some of the 50 houses evacuated north of the city on Saturday were allowed to return home as water levels stabilized.
Officials said Manitoba was better prepared for flooding this year because of dikes and efforts to break up potential ice jams before they caused major problems, but residents were urged to be vigilant.
“That’s just the nature of these kind of events. There are always surprises,” Manitoba Premier Greg Selinger told reporters.
Outside the bigger cities, the Red River and tributaries spread out across flatlands and can leave communities such as Oslo, Minnesota, as virtual islands inside miles-wide flows.
Several flood-related deaths have been reported this year along the Red River system. A dive team recovered Saturday the body of a Manitoba man whose truck submerged after he tried to cross a flooded road, Winnipeg newspapers reported.
Last week, two North Dakota hunters died after their boat overturned on a Red River tributary and a Minnesota resident died during sandbag operations at a family farm.
The flooding was expected to have a major impact on the amount of land farmers will be able to plant this spring. North Dakota has been the leading wheat-producing state the past two years and accounts for 16 percent of U.S. production.
(Reporting by Richard Mattern, David Bailey, Rod Nickel and Allan Dowd; Writing by David Bailey; Editing by Jerry Norton and Paul Simao)
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