TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — As a winter that has pelted much of the nation with unusually heavy snowfall slogs into the home stretch, some heartland communities are readying sandbags, pumps and their frayed patience for what forecasters say could be a flood-soaked spring.
Flat, frosty Minnesota and the Dakotas, no strangers to overflows during the annual thaw, are all but certain to be inundated again as waterways become engorged with melted snow and runoff from saturated soils, the National Weather Service says. But this winter's snowy barrage has enlarged the danger zone in the nation's midsection, with prospects for flooding rated high or above average in river basins from northern Montana to St. Louis.
The lower Great Lakes could be another trouble spot. Melting sno 'Rango' wrangles $38M for top spot w and heavy rain threatened flooding in all 88 of Ohio's counties last week. The town of Findlay (population 36,000) was submerged, and waters up to 4 feet deep destroyed a building at Cleveland's zoo and killed a peregrine falcon. An overflow creek forced about 200 people to be evacuated from their homes in the Lake Erie community of Sunset Bay, N.Y.
Much of the eastern U.S. has gotten more snow than usual, putting eastern New York state and southern New England at an elevated flood risk, according to the weather service. Connecticut has gotten more than 80 inches. The snowpack ranges from 10 to 20 inches in Rhode Island.
In the South, where snow wreaked havoc with the Super Bowl in Texas, gave Atlanta its first white Christmas in decades and whitened North Carolina's sugary beaches, it has melted easily into ground parched by prolonged drought.
"We like to get snow because it recharges our soil moisture, but it just doesn't last long," said Gary McManus, associate state climatologist in Oklahoma, where February storms dumped more than 2 feet of snow.
The situation is different across much of the north-central region, where the ground is "frozen, water-saturated and snow-covered" and tributary streams are swollen, the weather service said in a recent report. Computer models suggest the snowpack's moisture level is among the highest in six decades. Much will depend on how quickly it melts and how much rain falls in March and April, the agency said, but conditions are ripe for moderate to severe flooding along the upper Mississippi River — from its headwaters near St. Paul, Minn., to St. Louis.
The report said St. Paul has a 95 percent chance of major flooding. Prospects are equally grim in Fargo, N.D., where forecasters said Red River overflow likely will submerge parts of downtown, and Grand Forks, about 70 miles to the north. Severe flooding also is expected along the James and Big Sioux rivers in South Dakota.