Swollen rivers threaten Midwest homes, farms and roadways

Updated 4:35 p.m. ET

Record flooding in the Midwest is cutting highways, saturating farms and driving hundreds from their homes in hardest hit Nebraska. The Missouri and other rivers across the state have reached record heights, causing emergencies to be declared in more than 50 counties.

High-water records

At least 17 high-water records have been set across Nebraska, where 660 people are in evacuation shelters and the National Guard and State Patrol have had to rescue more than 175 people, the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency said in a statement.

“It was miles wide,” said Bob Henson, a meteorologist with Weather Underground, who was in Nebraska City Sunday. “It was the scope of the river’s breadth that really amazed me.”

Rising waters pushed the Missouri within a foot of closing the Cooper Nuclear Station in Brownville and are disrupting ethanol supply, sending prices of the corn-made biofuel to a seven-month high. Further afield, wet weather since last fall has led to shipping problems on the Mississippi, a spillway being opened just above New Orleans and many farmers falling behind on planting corn, soybeans, cotton and other crops across the South.

“Some of these places need an extended period of dry weather to get fieldwork started,’’ said Dan Hicks, a meteorologist at Freese-Notis Weather in Des Moines, Iowa. “But I don’t see an extended dry spell.’’

While this week will be dry, the rain could begin again by month-end.

Missouri River at record levels in many places

The Mississippi and Ohio Rivers have been spilling their banks for weeks, slowing river traffic and last week’s winter storm across the Great Plains has pushed the Missouri River to record levels in many places.

In February, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had to open the Bonnet Carre Spillway 28 miles (45 kilometers) upstream on the Mississippi from New Orleans to take flooding pressure off the city. The spillway, finished in 1931, has only been opened 13 times, and this is the first time it has been used in back-to-back years, said Matt Roe, spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers New Orleans District.

The flood woes extend north as well. The mayor of Fargo, North Dakota declared an emergency and ordered 1 million sandbags to barricade the city from the Red River, which is expected to flood in coming weeks.

The river, which forms the border between North Dakota and Minnesota, flows north into Manitoba, where provincial officials predict it will now rise higher than an epic 2009 flood, when waters crested in Winnipeg at 22.5 feet (about 7 meters.)

‘Wettest winter for the U.S. on record’

“It was the wettest winter for the U.S. on record,” Henson said. “In this case, more than 40 of the 48 contiguous states were above average all the way from California to Maine.”

The soils saturated in the fall, froze and then became snow covered, he said. The melting snow and rains now have no place to go.

Even away from the areas where rivers have broken their banks, it will take a while to dry out the land, Hicks said. In many cases because rivers and streams are swollen there is no place for water to go every time it rains.

Messy for livestock

“Exceptionally wet” conditions from the Mississippi River Delta in Arkansas to North Carolina will slow fieldwork and plantings of corn and soybeans this week, according to Global Weather Monitoring.

Rain predicted later in the week will further hamper plantings in the South, where farmers are typically among the first to plant crops in the spring. Rains and melting snow also caused severe flooding in the Plains region, cutting off access to cattle and forcing ethanol plants in Nebraska to shut down.

“It could still be messy for livestock — the cattle won’t be happy,” John Dee, owner of Global Weather Monitoring in Michigan, said by telephone on Monday.

The Missouri wasn’t expected to stop rising until later this week, according to CHS Hedging

Feeding stranded cattle

Near the flooded Platte River in Nebraska, some cattle ranchers were hauling hay and other feed in boats to deliver to stranded cattle, said Talia Goes, communications coordinator for Nebraska Cattlemen. Goes said the agency did not have any statistics yet on how many cattle might have perished in the worst flooding in decades in the state.

“A lot of people are still battling the floods. Water is still coming in,” Goes said by telephone. “People are using boats and airboats to make sure animals are fed, and caring for them as best as they can.”

Related:

• Tackling flood damage to dwellings
• What insurance agents need to know about winter flood risks
• Climate advocates cheer Trump policy shift on flood insurance

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