Comments on: Spirits undampened

By: CGHill

CGHill — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 20:21:54 +0000

Now the bad news: they’re forecasting 42 feet.

By: CGHill

CGHill — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 16:51:04 +0000

There’s an outlet to the Bay, but it’s the Nelson River. (And given the sheer size of Lake Winnipeg — about 9500 square miles — I don’t think we can argue that the Nelson is in any way a continuation of the Red.)

By: McGehee

McGehee — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 15:06:20 +0000

I was assuming Lake Winnipeg empties out in turn. Was I wrong?

By: CGHill

CGHill — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 18:07:26 +0000

The Red actually empties into Lake Winnipeg; it never quite makes it to Hudson Bay.

By: McGehee

McGehee — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:33:44 +0000

FTR, Grand Forks is next to the Red River of the North; its waters go up into Canada and, unless I’m mistaken, thus to Hudson Bay.

Years ago, after the ’97 floods if I remember right, my wife considered applying for a position with the NWS office located in Grand Forks. Life in mosquito-ridden Interior Alaska was too fresh in our memories at the time, so when I learned how prevalent the buggers are in GF I lobbied against the idea.

By: Ted

Ted — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:16:41 +0000

I was stationed at Grand Forks AFB in the late 70′s during one of their periodic floods. Truckloads of sand and volunteers from the base were headed to town 24/7 during the crisis. Helicopters dropped pallets of empty sandbags to be filled. We worked our asses off for a week to save much of the city, but I always wondered why you would choose to build and live in an area that you know is going to be flooded. Not if, but when.

By: fillyjonk

fillyjonk — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:03:34 +0000

When my dad took early retirement from his university job, he applied for a number of others – the three top finalists were in Central Illinois, Eastern Michigan – and Grand Forks.

The family wound up moving to Central Illinois, as that’s the one he took. (Grand Forks was #2 on the list, apparently)

I was still living with them in 1997 (finishing up my dissertation) and I remember one night (my dad was out of town that evening) they were showing the flood footage on the news, and my mom looked at me with kind of a haunted expression and said, “I’m so glad we didn’t move there.”

Still, those Mississippi-adjacent people are a hearty bunch – I don’t know if I could keep living somewhere that I knew was very likely to wipe my home out in that way in the future.