Tag Archives: snow melt

Blizzard moves towards Plains and Midwest after waning in the U.S. Rockies

A general view of the blizzard in Greeley, Colorado, U.S. March 13, 2019 in this picture obtained from social media. Mandatory credit TWITTER @PHOTOWILLG/via REUTERS

By Keith Coffman

DENVER (Reuters) – A powerful storm bringing heavy snowfall and strong winds was churning across the U.S. Plains and Midwest on Thursday, a day after a blizzard in the Rocky Mountains grounded flights, caused power outages and raised fears of further Midwest flooding after a deluge last month.

Warm spring temperatures on Tuesday, upwards of 80 degrees Fahrenheit in Denver, gave way to frigid 20s, heavy snow, gale-force winds and life-threatening conditions through Thursday, the National Weather Service said.

David Roth, a meteorologist with the weather service’s Weather Prediction Center, said that while the Rockies were expected to receive constant precipitation until Saturday, the center of low pressure of the blizzard was spinning into the U.S. Plains and Midwest.

Roth said the storm system will turn northeast into Minnesota late on Thursday and then slowly move into Lake Superior by Friday night.

Heavy snow with blizzard conditions was expected through Thursday night in southeastern South Dakota and southwestern Minnesota, the weather service said.

Despite the severe weather, crew members at Denver International Airport worked through the night to remove snow from runways, and only about 180 flights were canceled on Thursday morning, down from more than 700 a day earlier, according to FlightAware.come, a flight tracking service, and airport officials.

“Some cancellations and delays are expected today, so be sure to check your flight status with your airline!” airport officials wrote on Twitter on Thursday.

Residents throughout the north-central United States could expect downed trees, widespread power outages, road closures and treacherous driving through Friday, the NWS said.

More than 10,000 homes and businesses were without power in South Dakota and about another 10,000 in Minnesota early Thursday.

Officials in Colorado ordered state government offices in 54 counties to be closed on Thursday, according to a statement posted on Facebook. Government offices in Denver were closed on Wednesday afternoon due to weather conditions, according to a statement on the state’s website.

Brian Hurley, another meteorologist with the weather service, had previously described the powerful blizzard as a “bomb cyclone,” the second one to hit the area in two months.

“This is like a slow-moving snowstorm inside a hurricane,” Hurley said, adding that wind gusts were upwards of 100 mph on Wednesday in eastern Colorado.

In March, another “bomb cyclone,” which involves a rapidly intensifying cyclone, triggered heavy rain over the region and combined with melting snow to cause flooding along the Missouri River and its tributaries. Damages and losses to property, cattle and crops in Nebraska and Iowa alone were estimated at more than $3 billion .

This week’s weather system is expected to weaken and move to the Great Lakes area on Friday, bringing rain and snow to that region, the Weather Service said.

“All that snow is going to melt sooner rather than later, and it’ll all flow into the Missouri River basin,” Hurley said.

(Additional writing and reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta; additional reporting by Andrew Hay in Taos, New Mexico; Gina Cherelus in New York and Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; editing by Larry King and Bernadette Baum)

More floods loom as high river waters recede in Midwest

FILE PHOTO - The Kansas side of the Missouri River is seen in Atchison, Kansas, U.S., March 22, 2019 in this picture obtained from social media. SHAWN RIZZA/via REUTERS

By Karen Dillon

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (Reuters) – Record floods that submerged parts of three Midwestern states bringing death and destruction were retreating in Kansas City on Monday but icy tributaries in Montana and the Dakotas threatened more floods for weeks to come, the National Weather Service said.

High flood waters have already returned in the western Dakotas, northwest Nebraska and central and eastern Montana, along smaller rivers that feed into the Missouri, David Roth, a meteorologist with the NWS’s Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland, said on Monday.

Warmer weather makes the once solid river ice break-up into giant chunks, like mini-icebergs, Roth said.

“The ice floats down river until it bunches up in what we call an ice-jam, like a dam, causing flooding,” he said.

“All that backed-up water is eventually going downstream,” Roth said. “It’ll come down the Missouri in a couple of weeks, and maybe hit Kansas City in mid-April.”

Midwest floods were unleashed last week after a “bomb cyclone” storm dumped torrential rains on hundreds of square miles (km) of the snow-covered Plains.

The record flows cascaded down the Missouri, the country’s longest river, killing at least four people, drowning livestock and closing dozens of roads in Nebraska and Iowa. Property losses were estimated at more than $3 billion in those two states.

Those flood waters crested near Kansas City on Sunday, the weather service said.

No further precipitation is forecast for the Midwest until midweek, when moderate rainfall is expected, NWS’s Andrew Orrison said Sunday.

“I think at the worst what it will do is just prolong the gradual receding of the water levels across the various river basins throughout the Midwest.”

The current flooding threatens Kansas City’s drinking water. More than 600,000 customers in the Kansas City metropolitan area were asked to conserve water as flood-levels in the Missouri River created “treatment challenges,” the city’s water utility said on Sunday.

But far up the nation’s longest river, floods loom again.

The Billings Gazette reported late Sunday that rapid snow melt drove ice jams on the Little Bighorn River, forced the shutdown of a stretches of major highways in eastern Montanta all the way to the Wyoming border.

But the bigger threat is warmer temperatures that will hit the upper 60s in Billings by Tuesday and into midweek, driving more snowmelt that will eventually flow south, said meteorologist Roth.

“All that water is still headed downstream,” he said.

(Reporting by Karen Dillon; Additional reporting and writing by Rich McKay in Atlanta; additional reporting by Peter Szekely and Andrew Hay, Editing by William Maclean)

Missouri River towns face deluge as floods move downstream

A flooded parcel of land along the Platte River is pictured in this aerial photograph at La Platte, south of Omaha, Nebraska, U.S. March 19, 2019. REUTERS/Drone Base

By Humeyra Pamuk

VALLEY, Neb. (Reuters) – A string of small Missouri towns prepared for the next deluge along the raging Missouri River on Wednesday after flooding wreaked nearly $1.5 billion in damage in Nebraska, killing at least four people and leaving another man missing.

High water unleashed by last week’s late-winter storm and melting snow has already inundated a large swath of Missouri, Nebraska and Iowa along the Missouri River, North America’s longest river. States of emergency have been declared in all or parts of the three Midwestern farm states.

The Missouri River’s next major flood crest was forecast to hit St. Joseph, Missouri, at 6 a.m. on Friday and Kansas City, Missouri, 55 miles (88 km) to the south, about 24 hours later, said Mike Glasch of the Omaha District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Homeowners and businesses across Leavenworth County, Missouri, where 81,000 people were under a flood warning on Wednesday, were placing sandbags around property as they have watched the river rise over the last few days, Kim Buchanan, the county’s deputy director of emergency management, told Reuters.

“We have moderate flooding at this time,” she said, noting that the forecast shows the river cresting seven feet above flood stage on Thursday or Friday. “Anybody with river interest has already instigated their flood plans and have taken their defensive actions.”

FOUR DEAD

The floods killed four people in Nebraska and Iowa since last week, and officials warned the damage toll would rise as receding waters revealed more devastated roadways, bridges and homes.

A fifth man has been missing since the collapse of the Spencer Dam along the Niobrara River last. He was identified by the Omaha World-Herald newspaper as Kenny Angel.

Authorities said they had rescued nearly 300 people in Nebraska alone.

FILE PHOTO: Homes sit in flood waters after leaving casualities and causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, with waters yet to crest in parts of the U.S. midwest, in Peru, Nebraska, U.S., March 19, 2019. REUTERS/Karen Dillon

FILE PHOTO: Homes sit in flood waters after leaving casualities and causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, with waters yet to crest in parts of the U.S. midwest, in Peru, Nebraska, U.S., March 19, 2019. REUTERS/Karen Dillon

A levee break prompted the evacuation of the small community of Craig, Missouri. Real estate agent Jamie Barnes said everyone in town had time to get out before it was flooded, and water was now flowing south through farmland toward communities such as Forest City, Forbes and St Joseph.

“There’s just water as far as the eye can see, from bluff to bluff. In some places its five miles, in some 15,” Barnes said by phone.

Several other communities in that area of northwest Missouri have also been evacuated, the Army Corps of Engineers said at a briefing.

“Much of the levee system remains compromised, and as of noon Wednesday there are more than 30 total breaches across the system,” in the three states experiencing flooding, Lieutenant Colonel James Startzell, deputy commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Omaha District told the briefing.

AIR FORCE BASE FLOODED

“I was driving out to get one more load of corn from the bins when the levee broke, and there was a wall of water coming at me,” said Howard Geib, 54, whose farm is near Craig. “I was on the phone with my son-in-law, who was driving out to help, telling him, ‘Stop! Stop! Turn around!'”

The flooding killed livestock, destroyed grains in storage and cut off access to farms because of road and rail damage.

Across the Missouri from Craig, the village of Rulo, Nebraska, drew a small crowd of onlookers to see the deluge, said Kelly Klepper, owner of Wild Bill’s Bar & Grill.

“We’re kind of a tourist attraction right now,” Klepper said by phone.

Missouri emergency managers said they may be spared the worst of the flooding because of breaches further north.

“It’s really sad that we had a couple levies fail upstream, but that’s helped everyone downstream,” said Steven Bean of Kansas City’s emergency management agency.

But Bean said the kind of flooding hitting the Midwest is typically seen in June and July, after the final snow-melt and the spring rains.

“This is March, and we haven’t had the final snowmelt,” he said. “We haven’t had the spring rains. The reservoir is full. They have got to get it empty.”

More than 2,400 Nebraska homes and businesses were destroyed or damaged, with 200 miles (322 km) of roads unusable and 11 bridges wiped out, Governor Pete Ricketts said on Wednesday.

Ricketts estimated the floods caused at least $439 million in damage to public infrastructure and other assets and $85 million to privately owned assets. He put flood damage for the state’s agricultural sector at nearly $1 billion.

Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha, which houses the U.S. Strategic Command, remained heavily flooded, though base officials said on Twitter the facility was still “mission-capable.”

In Valley, Nebraska, outside Omaha, Pete Smock, 42, worked to clear deep mud surrounding his home and construction business.

“Devastation is everywhere. I haven’t seen anything like this in my lifetime,” Smock said. He had rented heavy equipment to fill deep holes cut by the floods with gravel and repair driveways leading to his office and garage.

(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk; Additional reporting by Gina Cherelus in New York, Rich McKay in Atlanta, Jarrett Renshaw in Philadelphia, P.J. Huffstutter and Mark Weinraub in Chicago, Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee, Andrew Hay in Taos, N.M. and Steve Gorman and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Writing by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Bill Tarrant and Alistair Bell)

Mike Pence to visit Nebraska amid deadly floods

Lanni Bailey and a team from Muddy Paws Second Chance Rescue enter a flooded house to pull out several cats during the flooding of the Missouri River near Glenwood, Iowa, U.S. March 18, 2019. Passport Aerial Photography/Handout via REUTERS

(Reuters) – U.S. Vice President Mike Pence will visit Nebraska on Tuesday to survey the devastation left by floods in the Midwest which have killed at least four people and caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage.

The floods, the result of last week’s ‘bomb cyclone,’ a term used by meteorologists to describe the powerful winter hurricane, inundated stretches of Nebraska and Iowa along the Missouri River. It swamped homes, covering about a third of the U.S. Air Force Base that is home to the United States Strategic Command, and cut off road access to a nuclear power plant.

FILE PHOTO: One of many areas near the southeast side of Offutt Air Force Base affected by flood waters is seen in Nebraska, U.S., March 16, 2019. Courtesy Rachelle Blake/U.S. Air Force/Handout via REUTERS

FILE PHOTO: One of many areas near the southeast side of Offutt Air Force Base affected by flood waters is seen in Nebraska, U.S., March 16, 2019. Courtesy Rachelle Blake/U.S. Air Force/Handout via REUTERS

Farms were deluged and rescuers could be seen in boats pulling pets from flooded homes.

About 74 Nebraska cites had declared states of emergency by Monday evening, according to Nebraska Emergency Management Agency (NEMA). More than 600 residents were evacuated and taken to American Red Cross-operated shelters.

“Heading to Nebraska today to survey the devastating flood damage. To the people of Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, Kansas, all regions impacted: we are with you,!” Pence said in a post on Twitter early Tuesday. He will tour the zone with Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts and Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds.

The flood waters are the result of snowmelt following heavy rains last week and warm temperatures, said Bob Oravec, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center.

“Most of the snowpack in Nebraska is now gone, but upriver in North and South Dakota, there’s significant snowpack of up to 20 plus inches (51 cm) and it’s melting,” he said.

Flooded Platte River seen in this DigitalGlobe Satellite image over Nebraska, U.S., March 18, 2019. Picture taken on March 18, 2019. ©2019 DigitalGlobe, a Maxar company/Handout via REUTERS

Flooded Platte River seen in this DigitalGlobe Satellite image over Nebraska, U.S., March 18, 2019. Picture taken on March 18, 2019. ©2019 DigitalGlobe, a Maxar company/Handout via REUTERS

The Missouri River, the longest in North America, has flooded much of Nebraska between Omaha and Kansas City.

The river was expected to crest at more than 47 feet (14.5 meters) on Tuesday, breaking the previous record, set in 2011, by more than a foot (30 cm), NEMA said.

At least one person was missing on Monday. The four reported deaths included one person in Iowa who was rescued from flood waters but later succumbed to injuries, according to the Fremont County Sheriff’s Office.

“This is clearly the most widespread disaster we have had in our state’s history,” in terms of size, Governor Ricketts told reporters Monday.

Damage to the state’s livestock sector was estimated at about $400 million, said Steve Wellman, director of the Nebraska Department of Agriculture.

The state’s highway system suffered hundreds of millions of dollars in damage, said Kyle Schneweis, director of the state Department of Transportation.

(Reporting by Gina Cherelus in New York and Rich McKay in Atlanta; Editing by Scott Malone and Bernadette Baum)

Spring weather to bring more floods to waterlogged U.S. Plains states

Highway 281 is seen damaged after a storm triggered historic flooding, in Niobrara, Nebraska, U.S. March 16, 2019. Office of Governor Pete Ricketts/Handout via REUTERS

(Reuters) – The U.S. Central Plains states could face more flooding this week as rising temperatures accelerate snow melt across the region, weather forecasters said Monday.

Floods in the aftermath of a late-winter storm that dumped snow and rain on the nation’s midsection last week have already killed two people and destroyed homes and businesses.

“The good news is that apart from some very light rain tonight, this will be generally a dry week across the region,” said Bob Oravec, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s (NWS) Weather Prediction Center.

“But we’re in a warming trend. Slightly above average springtime temperatures means more water from snowmelt is going into already flooded river basins,” Oravec said.

Temperatures across the hardest-hit areas of Nebraska and Iowa will be reach highs in the low 50 degrees Fahrenheit through midweek and into the 60s by Friday, he said.

Water levels are expected to rise through the week, according to the NWS, prompting evacuations in communities along the Missouri River on the Nebraska and Iowa border, as well as the Elkhorn and Platte rivers in Nebraska.

Flooding is not expected to abate until at least midweek in the Plains and Midwest region, the NWS reported.

“The big ones (rivers) are at record stages right now,” Marc Chenard of the NWS said Sunday. “There have been some levy breaks so there are towns that are flooded.”

Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts, who declared a statewide emergency last week, wrote on Twitter that he witnessed “unbelievable devastation” when he visited several flooded communities on Saturday.

“Getting an update from local officials and public safety personnel in Missouri Valley today. Rain and melting snow have caused severe flooding all across Iowa,” Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds said on Sunday on Twitter.

Reynolds also issued an emergency proclamation at the outset of the flooding.

The weather was blamed for two deaths, including one person who died at home after failing to evacuate, and a man swept away while trying to tow a trapped car with his tractor.

Some small towns and communities have been cut off by floods while others have seen fresh drinking water become scarce.

Meteorologists have referred to the storm, which blew from the Western Rockies to the Central Plains last week, as a “bomb cyclone” — a winter hurricane that forms when the barometric pressure drops 24 millibars in 24 hours.

“That system brought 1 to 3 inches of rainfall but, on top of that, there was already a deep snowpack over much of the area. So a combination of the rain and snow melt had a large volume of water going pretty quickly into the rivers,” Chenard said.

(Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta, Barbara Goldberg in New York and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Editing by Catherine Evans)