CHANHASSEN, Minn. — Living near a river, flooding is always a few rainstorms away, and this spring has produced plenty.
In Cook Minnesota the excessive rain has flooded many businesses downtown.
City and county officials in Carver Minnesota are also preparing for flooding in its downtown area.
Workers were busy Thursday afternoon shoring up their local levee with extra sand, just in case the river levels rise in the coming days.
Craig Schmidt with the National Weather Service says higher river levels are likely.
“We’re seeing potential for some pretty major flooding coming up,” Schmidt says.
"The areas where we’re most concerned about river flooding right now would be the Crow River Basin and pretty much the Minnesota Basin and the tributaries leading into it. We could be looking at the Cottonwood, the Redwood," he added.
Schmidt says last year's drought is helping, because the ground was dry enough to take on most of this was water, but that help has run out.
"Until the last two weeks we still had some room in there, but with the rainfall we've had over the last week we have pretty much saturated the soils now. There’s really no more room for that moisture to go. So, it’s going to start running off.”
That's why Schmidt says the flooding problems may soon extend beyond river communities, with much of the state at risk for flash flooding.
"We're going to get some heavy rainfall tonight (Thursday). The Friday night one could be even heavier and if the two heavy events line up, we could look for some fairly significant flash flood potential. Don't know exactly where that might be yet, but that could be anywhere from Central, Southern, Eastern Minnesota. It could be toward the twin cities."
Best case scenario, the rain events drop their rain in different areas of the state, and no communities are hit twice.
Schmidt would also like to see four to five days with no rain so the ground can dry out.
"Those dry days would really help, especially during growing season when all the crops are helping to pull in some of that moisture through their root systems."
But worst case scenario, the rain hits the same areas twice and it drops a lot of rain in a short amount of time.
"If we do get some six or seven, or eight inch areas on top of what we already have, I'm very concerned if I see that. If we get what could happen in the next 48 hours I will be very concerned over the next couple of weeks.”
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