By BRENT MARTIN

St. Joseph Post

It has been wet, abnormally wet.

Heavy rain has worsened flooding throughout the area the last two weeks, wreaking havoc with efforts to recover from mid-March flooding.

Reservoir Regulation Team Lead, Kevin Grode, of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says some areas of South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas have received four-to-six times their normal amount of precipitation.

“What does that mean, four to six times normal? When we look at the observed precipitation in western South Dakota, we’re seeing areas of six to eight inches of rain; same thing in Nebraska. As we look in Kansas and Missouri, we’re seeing areas of 10 to 15 inches of rain that have occurred in the last two weeks,” Grode tells participants in a recent Army Corps of Engineers’ conference call.

Grode says in May, the basin had 7 ½ million acre feet of runoff over 29 days.

“To give you some historical context of what that means, 7 ½ million acre feet. The record is 9.2 million that occurred in 2011. The second highest before 2019, was 1995 of 7.2 million,” according to Grode.

Grode says the huge runoff in May came on the heels of two high runoff months in March and April.

Grode says it’s hard to exaggerate how wet it has been in March, April, and May.

“In those three months of March, April, and May, we’ve already seen 26.3 million acre feet,” Grode says. “We normally see about 25 million acre feet in an average year. So, in the three months, these preceding three months, we’ve already seen a year’s worth of runoff in the upper basin.”

The Corps says the situation has caused it to increase water releases from Gavins Point Dam far above the usual releases of this time of year. The Corps increased water releases to 75,000 cubic feet per second over the weekend. Normally, releases this time of year as around 30,000 cfs.