07-03-2024 Minnesota & Wisconsin - Mississippi River Flooding 

My brother used to live on French Island in La Crosse - I would venture a guess that even though most of the houses there are built on elevated mounds or piers, that many of them are flooded out. We grew up in Prairie du Chien in the 40's and 50's - the 3rd ward flooded so many times, that in the 60's the city condemned all the houses there and leveled the area. Only the Villa Louis, the old replica fort, the city swimming pool and a few riverfront stone buildings from the frontier days remain. Now that area is a city park.

This is not flooding. This is SOP river stuff. Parks, ballfields, boat houses, etc., are meant to flood. It is called city planning. Farmland tends to follow rivers due to the expansive nature of past floods enjoyed by the land. The floods deposited fertile sediment that translated to great crop growth. With the development of drain tile, farmers found a way to drain the low lying and swampy areas that had previously been unfarmable. Many communities also had the money to install dikes and levees, which halted flooding of fields, and led to more developable, taxable, land development. So, after decades of draining lowlands and building levees (along with the impervious concrete and blacktop developments), the water that once fell as rain in swamps, replenishing the aquifers, and spreading outwards from the riverbed, slowly migrating into the flow of water- we now have cropland who's drain tile and storm water runoff that dumps the water immediately into the rivers, and levees constraining the formerly meandering natural flow - with nowhere else for the water to go. This is the situation today - with higher river levels and lower cubic feet per second flow rates that we have.

Oh man. I love Winona MN! Not surprised there was some flooding though. Over between La Crosse and La Cressent people build a couple homes on that large island in the Mississippi. I wonder if that's going to flood?

I guess that ends the drought for a little while?

Excellent for barge traffic; not so good for riverside homes. Thanks, LSM! 👍

Sooooo... I'm guessing the burn ban is lifted?😂 All kidding aside I've lived here 25 years and this is the worst I can remember. Anybody else?

The Mississippi River is great fir catching catfish.

Build in a flood plain. Guess what will happen?

Yeah the Mississippi River isn’t drying up now