Months of drought and declining river flows mean little risk of spring flooding across Minnesota and the Dakotas, a dramatic departure from recent years of repeated battles against historic river crests.
"Like night and day," said Jim Kaiser, a National Weather Service forecaster in Grand Forks, N.D., comparing spring outlooks with last year, when near-record flooding was a virtual certainty at Fargo-Moorhead and sandbags and barricades were sprouting in many of the region's other riverside cities.
In the outlook released Thursday by the Weather Service, the Red River was given a better than 50 percent chance of minor flooding at Fargo through the end of April. But even that 18-foot crest would cause little notice in Fargo-Moorhead, where the Red reached a record 40.8 feet in 2009 and has seen six of its eight highest crests since 1997.
In the Twin Cities metro area, where some major commuting roads and bridges were closed over the past two years, the Mississippi River at St. Paul, the Minnesota at Savage and the St. Croix at Stillwater have little chance of reaching even minor flood stages, according to Weather Service hydrologists. Minor flood stage would have little public impact.
"I know everybody in this community needs a year off," said Fargo Mayor Dennis Walaker. "Normally, it's 10 years or so between major events, but we've had three in a row."
"It's a nice psychological break," said Steve Jones, city manager in Montevideo in western Minnesota, which has similarly scrambled to pile up sandbags and clay against the Minnesota River the past three springs. "We're used to it, but it's a nice break for the staff and the community and for the people who are threatened by it not to have to deal with it."
Able to do other jobs
Without having to prepare for floods -- or plow the snow that contributes to them -- cities and other public agencies have been able to accomplish other tasks in recent months. Walaker said Fargo has been able to finish its promised street-paving projects. Montevideo has continued work on long-term levee improvements. St. Paul, having finished flood cleanups last fall, has been pressing ahead to complete getting federal reimbursement of the $1 million it paid out for emergency measures and cleanup last spring, said Rick Larkin, the city's director of emergency management.