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American Morning
Midwest Faces Major Flooding
Aired April 09, 2001 - 10:27 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It is sandbagging season in the upper Midwest, where there is a legitimate flood threat right now. Just four years ago, you may recall an overflowing Red River caused devastating flooding in North Dakota and Minnesota. Well, now towns along the Red River are taking more precautions.
Reporter Julie Borgan with our affiliate KARE has more for us from Breckenridge, Minnesota.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JULIE BORGAN, KARE REPORTER (voice-over): In the three years he's lived in Breckenridge, John Kappit (ph) has heard all about floods.
KAPPIT: All I see is water.
BORGAN: But he never expected this.
KAPPIT: Well, no. It's pretty crazy.
BORGAN: An extra inch and a half of water on Saturday poured onto already saturated ground, turning farm fields into lakes.
KAPPIT: She just came up. Within four hours it was knee deep.
BORGAN: Inside Kappit's house is dry, at least for now.
KAPPIT: Hopefully this is how high it gets and it'll start going down now.
BORGAN: But with the river already over flood stage and still rising, no one is banking on it.
UNIDENTIFIED RESIDENT: Line 'em up, guys.
BORGAN: Hundreds of extra volunteers poured into Breckenridge to help.
UNIDENTIFIED VOLUNTEER: I did it in '97. I did it in '89. So you've got to get out and help your neighbors. That's all we can do.
ALMA MEHL, RESIDENT: Well, I think they're wonderful. I really do. BORGAN: Now 82, Alma Mehl still lives with the memory of losing her basement four years ago.
MEHL: I just thought man, it couldn't happen again. I think it's going to come up.
MAYOR CLIFF BARTH, BRECKENRIDGE, MINNESOTA: No, I can't believe we're doing this again.
BORGAN: Mayor Cliff Barth says Breckenridge learned a lot in 1997. But even with 22 foot high levies now protecting the town, only time will tell if it's enough.
BARTH: At '97, we thought we were more prepared than ever, which we were, though we had no idea what was going to hit us.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HARRIS: And time is going to be an important issue because midweek this river is expected to crest and that's like just, what, a day and a half now?
KAGAN: We will be watching it. That report from our affiliate KARE.
Meanwhile, the Red River, as you said, expected to crest in Breckenridge by midweek. We are watching the weather there. Warm might be a bad thing because it's melting the snow and the ice...
HARRIS: That's right.
KAGAN: ... and that's just adding to the water level.
HARRIS: That's right. Jill Brown's got that for us now -- Jill?
JILL BROWN, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes, we'll take a look at all of that. This is the information we've gotten from the National Weather Service on the Red River and -- at Wahpeton, which is across the river, I believe, from the Breckenridge area. The flood stage is 10 feet. By Friday, that's the highest point on the forecast, 19.4 feet, and this forecast, this five day forecast only goes out to Friday.
So we may see this updated, especially as we get some rain in here midweek. And again, it looks like this will be updated every day so I'm sure we'll be looking at this more.
All of these are along the Red River -- Fargo, look at that, 35 and a half feet by Friday. East Grand Forks, 44 feet. And Drayton, which is a little farther north, 40.2. This goes from south to north and the river flows from south to north. So more rain definitely a bad thing. Doesn't look like we'll get it today. That's the good news. Temperatures are just a little bit above freezing, so we don't have the huge warm up here that we have in the southeast and that is probably very good news.
Temperatures, again, 37 degrees. So the snow that's out here will be melting, but melting slowly. Unfortunately, even though it's dry today and not that warm, things get worse as the week wears on. We are expecting more rain. Today, maybe a quarter of an inch. We think that'll be just a few locations so that shouldn't really add a lot to the flooding problems. Tomorrow looks mainly dry. And then watch the storm system developing here in the plains. It should be bringing some heavy rain into North Dakota and Minnesota it looks like by Wednesday. It should last through Thursday and then taper off on Friday.
That's not the only thing that we're expecting out of this developing storm system, with a cold front and also along this warm front where we've seen severe thunderstorms, we think we'll see more. So this could be a pretty hefty week for thunderstorms. Add to that the flooding problems as well.
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