CHANHASSEN, Minn. — All this wet weather, on top of a major snowfall, will affect the flood outlook this spring.
The National Weather Service says there are three main ingredients to alleviate any flooding: snowpack, soil moisture and frost depth.
"We had some factors working for flooding and some factors working against it and they almost completely even out," said NWS Hydrologist Craig Schmidt, who was in charge of releasing the initial NWS Twin Cities 2023 Spring Flood Outlook.
Overall, the spring flood threat is close to normal right now, despite a healthy snowpack. The snowpack has an abnormally high amount of water in it, but Schmidt says last year's drought is actually helping.
"There's a lot of room in the soil to soak up a lot of this melt," said Schmidt.
The NWS says soil moisture has started to recover over much of the area, but it's still below normal. And since it's still so dry, there are plenty of storage places for all that water.
Schmidt says lakes and rivers are also really low and the ground isn't even all that frozen in some places.
"We had a really early snowpack and it kind of acted like a blanket over the soil, so we didn't get a really deep frost this year," said Schmidt, meaning once the melt starts, the water will run into the soil, rather than off it.
Schmidt says the flood outlook will get clearer as we move more into March. He releases an updated version every other week.
"A lot of it will end up depending on if we keep adding more snow through the end of the winter and then what kind of melt do we get," said Schmidt. "If we get a really fast rise in temperatures that melts snow really quickly, that would increase the potential for flooding, as well as if we get a big rain event in the middle of all that."
While this much rain in February is "unusual," according to Schmidt, he says winter isn't over just yet if you're craving more snow.
"Models are starting to hint that we might get into a more active winter weather pattern toward the end of February, so we might add more snow," said Schmidt. "I can’t say how much or exactly when, but it’s something we’ll be keeping an eye on."
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