Officials: Metro Area Won't See Spring Flooding, Fargo Prepares

Through studying data and 30 years of experience, Ferris Chamberlin of the Army Corps of Engineers has come up with an educated calculation on the Mississippi flooding this spring.

"Very small chance of the Mississippi having very high stages this year," Chamberlin said.

This means more than likely the metro area won't see any major flooding this spring. So how did Chamberlin come to this conclusion? Well, one way he says is because of the rainfall we got a few weeks ago, it melted a lot of snow.
    
But he also figured it out through working with the national weather service. He says, the last week in February the corps did a snow survey - to determine how much is on the ground and how much moisture it holds. This gave them an average for lets say, Lake Ashtabula or Lake Travers. They then handed the data off to the weather service.     

"They've flown the basin with aircraft and they have their gamma survey. Their gamma survey tells them what the snow water equivalent is there," Chamberlin said.

The weather service then issues their forecast. But he says, don't be snowed, the corps is worried about flooding.

"The only places that are looking safe right now are in the Southern part of our district which would be the Mississippi River from St. Paul and South."

Chamberlin says, anything north of there, like, Cross Lake, Lake Winnie and Pokegama Lake, they are looking at some seriously high snow water up there.

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