Flood concerns rise as storm plunges eastern prairies back into winter

Residents of Saskatchewan and Manitoba are digging out from heavy snow and dealing with worries of worse flooding after a storm swept up from the United States on Monday and Tuesday.

The storm left behind a wide swath of heavy snow from southern Saskatchewan through central Manitoba, and passed heavy rain through parts of southern Manitoba.

Areas around Regina and Moose Jaw saw the edge of the storm, getting between 10 and 15 cm of snow on the ground by Tuesday night. Worse hit were regions to the east and southeast, around Yorktown and Melville, where the storm dropped between 15 and 30 centimetres.

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Warmer temperatures in southern Manitoba meant that they saw mostly rain, with 20 mm falling in the Winnipeg area and up to 30 mm of rain further to the southeast. However, regions of west of Lake Manitoba ended up with the brunt of the snow, with final amounts from the storm reaching between 20-30 centimetres in the Dauphin area, to between 35 and 45 centimetres near Plumas.

All this extra snow and rain is raising concerns about flooding this spring.

There was some good news coming out of North Dakota about the conditions along the Red River, but the threat of flooding is still high in many areas. The municipalities of Cornwallis, Cameron and Whitewaterre, in Manitoba, and Radisson, Borden and Maidstone, in Saskatchwan have already declared states of emergency due to flooding risk, and there have been reports of widespread flooding in areas northwest of Saskatoon.

The area between Winnipeg and Portage la Prairie narrowly avoided major flooding early Tuesday morning, as workers had opened up the Portage Diversion on the Assiniboine River late on Monday night, apparently just before an ice damn broke up-river. It's estimated that around five times as much water passed through the system than was predicted, so if the province had delayed, the results could have been devastating.

This storm brought colder temperatures with it, which may help draw the spring thaw out a bit longer and giving waterways a better chance to handle the flow without any major flooding. However, at the same time, the extra rain and snow added by the storm may increase the problem if there's a long stretch of warm weather afterward... which there seems to be.

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Current weather forecasts for Saskatchewan and Manitoba show temperatures gradually rising for the rest of the week, getting up into the low 20s on the weekend and stretching into Tuesday.

According to the Province of Manitoba's flood information site, there are already flood warnings in effect for the Swan River and the Whitemud River, and high water advisories have been issued for the Pembina River and the Dauphin-Swan River area. Strong wind warnings are also in effect, for lakes Winnipeg, Manitoba, Winnipegosis and St. Martin, and the Shoal Lakes, due to the potential for ice to build up on these lakes, and cause major backups in local rivers due to ice-damming.

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