As we are all enjoying beautiful weather (and gearing up for SLOIII) here in the west, and many other parts of the world for that matter, there are many Americans working hard in tough conditions to save their homes. Let this remind us of what we have and how quickly mother nature can take it away... please keep all of these people in your thoughts and prayers... Red River flooding - The Big Picture - Boston.com
Wow...those pictures really bring it home. I live about 200 miles SE of this area. My town has been sending busloads of volunteers to Fargo - Moorehead to help fill sandbags. My next door neighbor's son and daughter-in-law live right in Fargo and have evacuated out of concern their place might be next. I live virtually right on the Mississippi and do a bicycle run along it regularily...so I've been watching it up close and personal...the week before last the ice went out on it and this is a VERY impressive phenomena. It has a valley to contain it...but it gets pretty wild. Fortunately the latest word is the river is dropping slightly. Big snowstorm has hit there the last day or so...I think 9 inches of very heavy wet snow...my location got 6 inches. So much water in this kinda snow that a shovelful feels like your lifting a five gallon pail of water! The big concern now is wind...if it's windy enough it can wash water over and destroy the sandbags. (BTW the number of bags filled is around 3 MILLION). If you ever have been through this particular area you could imagine how this could happen...the terrain is absolutely billiard table flat, and the 'Red' really has no valley to contain it.
I might be heading to red river to fill sand bags and help out in the general situation. I am in military and there are about 150 of us heading there anytime. We are on 24 hour notice to get to the airport. I have no problem going there to help out, just not looking forward to filling sandbags and making dykes for a month.
