Farmers Found Not Guilty of all Charges.

The Red River Drainage Basin is saturated and has just received another load of snow.

Over two feet in a wide swath, with ten inches of snow surrounding that bullseye and a large ring of six to eight around that one.

The tributary streams are iced, but melting.
Another blast of moisture is heading our way now.

The first crest on the Red River of the North has passed downstream, north of Fargo, however another crest is expected.

With this new input of water and the melting rivers it may exceed the last.

Unfortunately, it seems many here in Minnesota also feel that they should not let "a crises go to waste", and are spinning the situation to push there agenda.

While people have been sandbagging and are now struggling to clean up, the subsidized eco-lobby is pushing the notion that the floods on the Red River are due to farmers use of drain tile in the fields.

O- yes, and of course, Global Warming.

They also said that about the wind throw of July 4, 1999 that downed millions of mature trees over an area the size of Massachusetts in north Minnesota. That from "scientists" at the University of Minnesota.

This from the bunch that says we need good science and not politics directing our legislation. I could not agree more, I wish they would be more open minded to evidence and scientists that offer a different conclusion to these natural events.

Many of these skeptical scientists can be found at the Global Warming Petition Project.
(If you look you will also find a meteorologist here in Minnesota that replaced one who is a Carbonophobe.)

Keep in mind that drain tiles are only two to four feet deep on average, only drain the soil above them, and eventually degrade. The ditches they lead to are very flat also, and many are maintained by THE STATE.

Get the government out of the crop subsidy, ethanol and ditch maintenance business and many an acre would not see the plow. We should at the same time stop telling the farmer how to manage his property.

Many a pothole would be full of water. (how that prevents flooding I don't know, but it seems to be the belief of the eco-freaks.)

Drain tiles also have very little affect when the ground is frozen as very little water penetrates the frost and just pools up, eventually sprawling out as it meets other pools on this table-top landscape.

No, it is not the farmer or Global Warming to blame for the flooding of this north flowing stream on the flat bed of an extinct lake bed.

This is natural and not too unexpected over the long view.

Lets talk about Flooding in Minnesota.

Spring is soon here and the talk of flooding in Minnesota is all the rage.

Keeping in mind that Minnesota is a vast area with widely varied and unique geography and topography...

Let's go back to basics.

There are about five real big variables, aside from unique geography, that determine the magnitude of a "Flood".

In no particular order, some of the things you need to get a real good flood here in Minnesota are....

1) A wet fall. Going into winter with thoroughly saturated ground with a high water table evident by full lakes, swamps, creeks and rivers.

2) A hard freeze prior to heavy snow cover. A hard deep frostline. The saturated soils freeze and become impermeable down to relatively deep depths.

3) A winter with lots of snow with lots of water content.

4) A strong warming that provides a quick thawing of the snowpack.

followed by a

5) A wet rainy spring.

Each drainage basin has its own situation. Minnesota is large. The Blue Earth is unique as is the Saint Louis or The Red River.

The Red is on the flat bottom of a ten thousand year dead marginal glacial lake. It is a river that drains a large area.

It winds its way slowly on the table flat silt bed, finding the slightly lower ground which, overall, leads north. North to Hudson Bay.

The headwaters of the Red River of the North typical thaws before the downstream half, north of the Canadian border.

Often, the flowing water backs up when it meets the ice dams where the floating growlers stack up and stop flow. This was well understood long before the European settlers arrived.

In the bottom land of the Red River basin, once the water rises high enough, the river overtops the natural levies of the riverbanks and quickly sprawls across the very flat terrain directly bordering the river.

Because it is so flat it may travel laterally for miles with just one foot of increased surface elevation.

And tributary streams from higher elevations may experience the effects of this back up.

Grand Forks is named Grand Forks for a reason.

Water will always seek its own elevation. The farther the fall the more energy involved, and faster falls are usually more dramatic then slow.

But not always.

The St. Louis falls fast, the Minnesota and the Red fall slowly, for example.

Water is heavy, "a pint's a pound the whole world round" is an old truism from the sea. Try to walk across a small flowing stream and you will understand the power of moving water.

Six inches of flowing water will move a car sideways.

To control the water you must control the energy.