Webcam on Red River at Grand Forks, ND
FARGO, N.D. – Weary residents welcomed the Red River's further retreat Monday but faced an approaching snowstorm expected to kick up wind-whipped waves that could threaten the sandbag levees they built to protect their city from a major flood.
North Dakota Flood Sets Fargo Record; Thousands Flee
The Red River is forecast to rise higher today after breaking a 112-year-old record in Fargo and forcing more than a quarter of the residents in a town across the waterway in Minnesota to flee their homes.
Officials in Moorhead, Minnesota, recommended 10,000 people evacuate yesterday, said Doug Neville, a spokesman for the Minnesota Emergency Operations Center. The town, which neighbors Fargo, North Dakota, has about 38,000 residents. The river is the border for the two states.
“We’re telling people, urging them strongly to leave, compelling them,” Neville said by telephone from St. Paul, Minnesota. “Once this crests at 43 feet, about the size of the sandbag walls there, all bets are off.”
Two people have died of heart attacks due to overexerting themselves while working to prevent the flood. Sixty-one people have been injured or become ill, according to a North Dakota Department of Emergency Services statement.
At Fargo, the river climbed to 40.82 feet (12.44 meters) overnight. However, it has dropped slightly to 40.72 as of 8:15 a.m. local time, almost 23 feet above the flood point, and eclipsing the previous record of 40.1 feet, set in April 1897, according to the weather service.
The Red River is putting enormous amounts of pressure on the city's 48 miles (77 kilometers) of protective dikes and levees and crews are struggling to reinforce weak spots and contain minor leaks, he told reporters.
Warnings posted on the state's emergency website said a blizzard watch had been issued from Sunday afternoon until Monday night for southwest and central Dakota, bringing strong winds of 25 (40 kilometers) to 45 miles (72 kilometers) an hour.
http://www.weather.gov/alerts/nd.html
http://nd.water.usgs.gov/
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=2
http://localwaterremoval.com/North_Dakota0601082&sid=aQ8eCWZFIsGg&refer=canada
http://www.ndsu.nodak.edu/fargoflood/
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090329/ts_afp/usweatherfloodnewseries
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