One of the big stories this year has been the flooding along the Missouri River. The featured chart presents the river stage observation from one of the automated sites near Sioux City. The river was in moderate flood stage for over 2 months! Among other things, this did a tremendous amount of damage to some the highways and interstates in the area which will require complete reconstruction.

Voting:
Good = 20
Bad = 3

Tags:   2011   flood  

Squaw Creek in Ames approached record levels seen back in 1993 yesterday, but came up a few inches short (18.13" versus 18.5"). The Squaw is the western river in Ames and affects the Iowa State University Campus. Many of you probably saw the water in Hilton Coliseum, that was from the Squaw. The featured image presents a comparison between 1993 and 2010 for the river gauge near Lincoln Way in Ames. With heavy rainfall expected on Friday night, it will be interesting to see how the secondary bump in river flow compares with 1993.

Voting:
Good = 35
Bad = 2

Tags:   flood   squaw  

The featured graph is from the National Weather Service website showing the forecasted crest for the Squaw Creek in Ames to exceed levels seen in 1993!

Voting:
Good = 32
Bad = 12

Tags:   flood  

Southern Iowa has certainly seen the worst of the heavy rainfall so far this summer. The featured chart is for the Lamoni ASOS since the first of May showing a total of over 18 inches of rain while the average accumulation for the period is only 6 some inches. Could a completely dry day finally be in store today? Regardless, more chances of thunderstorms, some of them severe, are back in the forecast for Thursday and Friday.

Voting:
Good = 29
Bad = 6

Tags:   flood  

The featured map displays NOAA modeled snow water equivalent (the depth of liquid water present in the snow pack) for the Des Moines River Basin (red outline) upstream of Saylorville Lake. A crude GIS calculation indicates that there is enough frozen water in the basin to fill Saylorville Lake 2.5 times! Of course, not all of this water will make it downstream into the reservoir, but we will have to be fairly lucky to melt all of this snow without significant flooding. The worst case scenario would be for a heavy rainfall event on top of this extensive snow pack. There is about 550 billion gallons of frozen supply upstream of a reservoir that holds 221 billion gallons.

Voting:
Good = 66
Bad = 23

Tags:   flood   swe  

The featured hydrograph was taken from the NWS website showing the South Skunk river coming within a foot of setting a record stage. The current river stage is back below flooding levels, but more heavy rainfall is expected this week. Soils are currently saturated and rainfall will quickly runoff causing flooding once again.

Voting:
Good = 23
Bad = 5

Tags:   flood