This year will be the fourth time in the past five years

[pscot]

that Fargo has experienced a top-ten flood




The Red River at Fargo, North Dakota surpassed major flood level on Sunday and continues to rise, with a peak expected Wednesday at the 9th highest flood level observed since 1897. On Friday, the President issued an emergency declaration for North Dakota because of the flooding, and millions of sandbags have been filled in anticipation of the huge flood. This year will be the fourth time in the past five years that Fargo has experienced a top-ten flood in recorded history. Flood stage is eighteen feet, and the Red River has now reached flood stage at Fargo for an astounding nineteen of the past twenty years, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Prior to this remarkable stretch of flooding (which began in 1993), the river flooded in just 29 of 90 years. The Army Corps of Engineers calculates that in the last twenty years, the Red River has had ten 1-in-10 year floods--one every two years, on average. Two of these floods (1997 and 2011) were greater than 1-in-50 year floods, and one (2009) was a 1-in-100 year flood. That year, the Red River hit a record high-water mark of nearly 41 feet, or 23 feet above flood stage. Thousands of people had to leave home for higher ground, and about 100 homes were badly damaged or rendered unlivable. This year's flood will be somewhere between a 1-in-10 year to 1-in-50 year flood. Since a 1-in-10 year flood, historically, has a 10% chance of occurring in a given year, the incidence of flooding along the Red River over the past twenty years has clearly been extraordinarily abnormal.

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/show.html

[Benton D Struckcheon]

1. I think they need to redefine the odds, no? n/t

[pscot]

2. O brave new world.

[madamesilverspurs]

3. Divert some of that our way. Please!

Between drought and the billions of gallons of water destroyed by frackers, we're in bad shape on Colorado's front range. Farmers are in trouble. Really do wish there was a way to relieve Fargo while diverting that water to where it's needed. Now that would be a pipeline I COULD support!

[Control-Z]

4. This may sound

naive, or perhaps just ignorant. But it seems to me, with Fargo as an example, that we know where the flooding will be, and we know where the droughts and water shortages will be. There must be a way to move the water to places where it is needed. Even a long term project would eventually help bring about some balance.

[pscot]

5. That water probably ends up

in the Ogalla aquifer. Diverting it might not be a good idea.

[OnlinePoker]

6. No, it flows north into Lake Winnipeg and eventually Hudson's Bay. n/t

[pscot]

7. I had no idea

[NickB79]

9. Water is incredibly energy-intensive to move

Due to it's density. Even a small slope in the wrong area would require massive amounts of energy to pump the water upwards against gravity. We already devote massive infrastructure to moving a few million barrels of oil around the continent; we'd need much, much more to move enough water to satisfy needs.

I recall reading a study a few years ago that estimated it would take several DOZEN coal-fired plants worth of electricity to pump water from Lake Superior to the US Southwest.

[OnlinePoker]

8. Of interest to me in the article were other reasons for the flooding other than weather.

In particular, increased urbanization and construction of anti-flood levees which only exacerbates the flood problem further down the river where these barriers don't exist. Instead of spreading out over the full flood plain, the high water gets concentrated in a smaller area that can't handle the volume.

[Nihil]

10. I seem to recall those reasons also applied to the big Mississippi flood from a few years back ...

... and yet the first response of many towns/cities on that river was to raise/add levees
rather than restore the flood plains ...

Insanity: Doing the same thing time after time yet expecting a different result.

[GliderGuider]

11. It's our standard response: Fix the local problem, screw the global problem.

Humans have very limited horizons in both space and time when it comes to threat analysis. We address every threat with the same mental tools we evolved to deal with lions on the savanna.