BURLINGTON, N.D. - A reconnaissance team with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, St. Paul District, has logged countless miles in their car within the past week as they continue looking at water levels within the Des Lacs and Souris river basins in North Dakota.
Michelle Schneider, Corps hydraulic engineer, said they have looked at every coulee from Minot, N.D., to the Des Lacs National Wildlife Refuge, in Kenmare, N.D., since arriving April 6.
“The snow is melting away,” said Schneider. “A lot of the coulees south of Minot have already peaked.”
Schneider and her colleague, Ed Eaton, are monitoring the basins to determine how much more water will pass through the Minot area in the coming days and weeks. The Souris River, or Mouse River, starts in Weyburn, Saskatchewan, before heading south toward Minot. The river then heads north back into Canada, spilling into the Assiniboine River.
Eaton, a Corps hydraulic engineer, said there is a lot of water coming in from the Canadian reservoirs in the next few days and it’s important to know when the local runoff starts dropping off. The water from the reservoirs eventually spill into U.S Fish and Wildlife Service’s Lake Darling, which is northwest of Minot. During flood events, the Corps manages Lake Darling’s water releases into the Souris River.
The increased water volumes entering the lake need to be released in a controlled manner, said Eaton. The Lake Darling releases are determined, in part, by the work of the reconnaissance team and their measurements. The team calculates the local runoff and the river flows already in the system to better understand what flows can be released from the lake. The Corps does this while trying to reach a target flow of 5,000 cubic feet per second at the U.S. Geological Survey’s river gage four miles northwest of Minot.
The information the team collects is also shared with the Corps’ water management section, based in St. Paul, Minn., and the National Weather Service, or NWS, in Chanhassen, Minn.
Schneider, the Brewster, Minn., native, said the teamwork between the Corps and the NWS has been great. “It’s almost like working for the NWS,” she added.
The NWS uses the information gathered by the reconnaissance team to help forecast the probable river crests within the basins.
“We provide the field work so they can provide better forecasts, concluded Schneider.”
| Date Taken: | 04.13.2011 |
| Date Posted: | 04.13.2011 19:22 |
| Story ID: | 68706 |
| Location: | BURLINGTON, NORTH DAKOTA, US |
| Web Views: | 89 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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