Warm, dry weather reduces flooding threat in Manitoba

WINNIPEG - People in Manitoba's Red River Valley should be able to breathe more easier this spring than the thousands who have been trying to hold back rising waters upstream in North Dakota.

Weeks of warm, dry weather have gradually melted snow about two weeks earlier than usual and reduced the likelihood of flooding in the coming weeks.

"This has taken the steam out of the snow pack, and there's not a whole lot of it left," Alf Warkentin, the province's senior flood forecaster, said Thursday.

With average weather between now and mid-April, the Red River in Manitoba should be almost a metre lower than last year's near-record level.

The water will still be high enough to swamp 600 square kilometres of farmland and rural roads, including a stretch of the main highway between Winnipeg and the U.S. border, Warkentin said. But communities and houses are expected to remain unscathed.

The government also hopes that ice jams will not be a problem. The mild winter has left river ice noticeably thinner than last year, when ice buildups caused flash flooding and damaged dozens of homes north of Winnipeg. The province also started cutting and breaking the ice earlier this year as a precaution.

"We're keeping our fingers crossed, 'cause you never know with ice, but it does look pretty optimistic," Warkentin said.

The Red is expected to crest this weekend in Fargo, N.D., and in neighbouring Moorhead, Minn., where one million sandbags have been filled and dump trucks have been unloading clay for emergency dikes.

Part of the reason Manitobans can be more optimistic is that the Red is wider on the Canadian side of the border, so there's more room for rising water.

The province also has better flood-fighting infrastructure. Instead of clay dikes that can leak, Winnipeg is surrounded by the Red River Floodway, a 47-kilometre ditch that can divert vast amounts of water around the city. Smaller communities are protected by permanent earthen dikes that kept the water back even last year when river levels were the second-highest in a century.

The Red is expected to crest in Manitoba in mid-April. Barring a streak of severe weather between now and then, residents are confident they will be OK. That confidence extends even to Morris, 50 kilometres south of Winnipeg, which was surrounded by water last year, prompting officials to close three of the four roads leading out of town.

"The melt is well underway ... and the ditches aren't anywhere near capacity, so I'm anticipating a good spring," said Mayor Dale Hoffman.