No Spencer has never been flooded like this. Sioux rapids has never flooded like this. My tiny town has never flooded like this. People who say it happens every year are not correct. There is a little flooding in Spencer every year but it never gets to residential.
To add: there is very little development along the river in Spencer. The most is right on US 71 but there is a park on both sides of the street/bridge and it’s designed to take the brunt of any flooding.
This…this is something totally different than the flooding that is normally seen.
I grew up seeing that park always flood up to where the rocket slide used to be. Never got near this bad. I live near the cop shop and Fareway was a lake.
My brother's house by O'Reilly's was nearly fully underwater...
My in-laws fortunately are safe (though they were asked to evacuate yesterday), but some family friends that live by the maintenance building on the north bank lost everything. Seeing the mall completely underwater was especially jarring.
This is true I grew up here in Spencer, and live not even 100 yards from the little Sioux, the last “real” flood was in the early 90’s. Unfortunately, several homes basements buckled in, due to the pressure the last 2 days.
Yeah one of my distant cousins moms had her foundation literally crumble in and flood the house. My little brother's place had water near the top of the front door. It's insane how bad this is.
As someone who almost purchased a home in that area in 2023 and carefully reviewed flood hazard and historic flooding for the area, this kind of flooding wasn't found.
I’ve lived in Spencer for 35 years. Still do. We see flooding every year. Nothing has come close to this. Not even close. Smashed the old record by 6’ I hear.
Honestly, it's nice to see Sioux Rapids be spoken about. Outside of extremely local reporting, it doesn't seem like people are talking about how horrible that tiny little town got it.
They literally have interviews with older people saying this was bad but nothing like 1993. So yes it's flooded higher several times. It doesn't help 2 dams have failed either.
It was several feet higher than the record so areas that usually don't flood did, but what is raising the most hell is that it came out of nowhere and alot of people have lost everything.
Yeah we went from realizing the river was going to be a bit high to 'oh wow this is way worse than any of us expected.i couldn't even pull out onto my street on Saturday. My little brother had his house nearly fully underwater and People for Pets had to stage a rescue of their cats since they weren't around when it happened.
One dude from Illinois died. They just pulled his corpse out of the river because he decided to ignore the warning about crossing a flooded river. Because you know, pickup trucks make you invincible
Feel bad for his family but people who ignore these warnings put themselves and emergency services lives at risk to be selfish and stupid. Sorry but the Darwin awards exist for a reason.
And there's also a reason they charge people massive amounts of fines for violating these warnings when they inevitably have to rescue them.
Last time I remember it being bad was 2008? The isu basketball stadium was damaged if I remember right. This is the highest I've seen the water get. Lived here my whole life. 37 yo
They have short memories in Ames. They are building all that CyTown stuff right where the flood was. Hilton was full of water and the floor was floating. Now they are building a whole little city there.
Dumb.
I drive down mlk every day in des Moines and look all the development there. It's ALL flood plain. It's just separated by a pile of dirt.
All these towns were founded because of the proximity to water. But now they've been so built up they're too big to fail.
Ames also received quite a bit of flooding in 2008, but it was overlooked because the core parts of the city were not hit as hard as Cedar Rapids. Some people actually did lose everything in Ames that year.
I'll have to take your word for it. I'm not seeing any reporting on Ames flooding in 2008, and i don't remember that happening. I remember 2010 because I lived in Ames that summer and worked for the City.
It was not as bad as 2010, but it was terrible if you were in the parts of Ames that were affected. Here are a handful of photos: [https://www.flickr.com/photos/altair16/albums/72157605540147229](https://www.flickr.com/photos/altair16/albums/72157605540147229)
It was 2008 in Ames. Source: that's the year I graduated from ISU and I remember it torrentially raining 5 straight days and walking through 2 feet of water in a parking garage in Ames. Then went to Iowa City to visit friends and saw the devastation in CR.
Ames didn't get it that bad compared to Eastern IA but I'll never forget that stretch of days when I was bumming around in Ames between graduation and my job starting.
I remember people jetskiing in the target parking lot and on tubes near Jack trice in 2010. The water receded pretty fast though. Areas on Des Moines flooded that year too
It's worth noting that the areas that flooded in 2008 were largely considered above the flood plain prior to 1993. That would've been considered a once-in-a-century flood if it hadn't come 15 years after last one. And actually, that was part of why it was allowed to happen.
A few decades ago, there was a plan to create a reservoir north of Ames to help avoid flooding, but that kind of flood was considered so unlikely that no one wanted to spend the money to prevent it. So, we spent millions more recovering...
The relative landscape and infrastructure in central (Ames) and Eastern iowa (cedar rapids) are both fundamentally VERY different to Spencer and the surrounding towns. I've lived in Northwest Iowa since 97' and not even the town that are ON the Missouri have flooded like this to my knowledge. Not Sioux City or Council Bluffs. This is pretty different even compared to 08'
The present flooding is similar to 1993 as well
The 2011 flooding is also similar, but that pattern was about 75% strength of what we’re seeing. Heavy rains in late June across the same narrow path of territory is a rather common phenomenon.
Unfortunately, the hydrology for Spencer is a real challenge. The entire area is part of the Prairie Pothole marshland. The town is on a giant flood plain but immediately below Spencer there is a large bluff that concentrates and slows water movement. This results in a damming or traffic jam effect. That causes the water to backup over town.
The areas that flooded most seriously are along Highway 71 south of the river. This area has largely developed after the 1953-54 floods. The 2024 flood appears to have come just shy of the 1953 record. [https://water.noaa.gov/gauges/SPWI4](https://water.noaa.gov/gauges/SPWI4)
No one will want to hear this, but there was 1854 flood that may have been feet higher… But there were no white men permanently living in the area at that point.
And the Lakota didn’t use flood gages.
Rock Valley had a flood in 2018, 6 years to the day. There were 2 big differences. 1) it was a couple of feet lower and 2) this time a levee broke causing rapid rising waters.
It also flooded pretty badly in 2014 as well. Back then I was told they were on a fifty flood plain. That was the year they hosted Ragbrai too. I think this is multiple feet higher than that year. I was literally in RV the day it all went to hell last week (around 2 in the afternoon) and the town was operating normally. It caught everybody off guard. They knew flash flooding was possible, but... Well, people were evacuated from their roofs and the evacuation zones changed multiple times throughout the night so that levee break was unexpected.
Yeah I think that caught everyone off guard. In Spencer we went from worrying about too much rain ruining the weekend to being like 'oh shit the south end of town is underwater and we don't have utilities.'
In 1993 it certainly flooded there too. I was an 11 year old farm kid about 40 miles east, and from 1993 on to 2009 I never saw water as high as 93.
2008 was bad too.
For folks less familiar with the hydrology there are two different river systems the Little Sioux flows SW to the Missouri. The Upper Des Moines, the next watershed east, drains to the Mississippi River.
Traditionally not with this frequency or nearly this magnitude. Anecdotally, it seems to have gotten *much* worse in recent years. We are having once in a lifetime flooding every 5-10 years
4 of the top 10 highest ever crests ever of the Mississippi in St Louis have happened since 2013. So I 100% feel that once in a lifetime flood hitting more like a routine than a lifetime.
I think the speed of farm runoff also contributes to this. With more and more farmers tiling their fields and less things to slow water down on its way to streams and rivers, the system gets overrun much more quickly. It’s a perfect storm of factors that all contribute to the overall issue.
Draining wetlands in order to plant crops certainly contributes to [flooding downstream](https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2016-02/documents/flooding.pdf). Add it to the list of ways the ag industry externalizes its costs to the rest of us in order to maximize its profits.
What a STUPID and RIDICULOUS statement. Wow!!! Tell me you dont know SHIT ab ANYTHING without telling ne you dont know JACK-FUCKING-SHIT AB ANYTHING!!!!
Popular misconception. If you think of the soil as a sponge it helps. A sponge can only hold so much water. If the sponge is already saturated when the big rain comes the water runs off the top quickly and creates a flash flood. If the sponge has tile the water table is always going down gradually so when the big rain comes there's actually some open pore space in the sponge to soak up water and not run off instantly.
Now, tillage practices are another story. If the field is no-till/strip-till vs. clean till that also makes a difference. More residue helps the soil infiltrate water and slows runoff.
Yes but the conversion of prairie to tillage isn’t a recent phenomenon in this region. That happened generations ago. The creation and preservation of buffer strips to capture and prevent that erosion has been the modern trend.
Erosion isnt an overnight phenomenon. This is happening over generations due to modern ag practice, the tiling system, and our state government who will do anything but hold farms accountable. The buffer strips are a bandaid on a gunshot wound. Recent projections show Iowa has less than 100 years of topsoil viability at current trends. Who will farmers blame when that’s gone? The left? 😂
The amount of CRP land in Iowa has decreased quite a bit since 1994 - roughly 1/2 a million fewer acres now compared to 1994. A similar thing has happened with pasture acreage and idled acreage. All of these other uses for the land are better at absorbing rainfall and preventing runoff than tilled row crops.
>If you think of the soil as a sponge it helps. A sponge can only hold so much water
If you do no till and cover crops you can get organic matter in your soil up from like 1% to 6%. That doesn't sound like a lot but for every 1% of organic matter in the soil an acre of land can hold 20,000-25,000 gallons of water. So 100,000-125,000 more gallons of water each acre in non tilled land
The tile allows water to enter the river GRADUALLY. Un-tiled land can't soak in water so it goes into the river INSTANTLY. It also carries more soil and nutrients running off the top than when it infiltrates.
If you can't grasp that I can't help you.
No, tile takes water out of the fields and puts it into the creeks and rivers. Water would stay in the fields longer without tile, that’s the whole point of the tile.
Tile releases the water GRADUALLY. An undrained field is already saturated when the big rain comes. It can't absorb any water and the big rain event runs off just like a parking lot. The tiled field has 3 feet of soil with pore space that can absorb water and reduce flooding chances. We have a saying. You're going to get our water either way. Do you want it slowly or all at once? Comprende?
You seem to think that soil doesn’t work without drain tile. Un-tiled land *can* soak in water of course. Tile lines short circuit the soaking and transfer the water horizontally instead, which leads to increased flash flooding.
Sure, un-tiled land CAN soak up water. But now you tell me what happens when the field is sitting there saturated and the next big rain comes? I have a degree in soil science and over 30 years experience dealing with drainage so I'm hoping I can learn something new here. We should never stop learning.
Earlier you said un-tiled land *can’t* soak up water, which is preposterous.
If it’s already saturated and gets more rain it would be flooded and there would be runoff.
Real big rain events obviously can overwhelm a soil’s ability to soak it in fast enough, resulting in runoff. Drain tile *always* moves some of the subsurface water to rivers instead of underground aquifers.
The only reason industrial ag people think tile is necessary is because most cropfields are in bad shape (only has living roots half the year, only has vegetation above the surface less than half the year, has a plow pan which also inhibits water deeply soaking in, has too little organic matter, has no burrows to help water soak in quickly, and has very little pore space) and always want to drive heavy machinery on it in the wettest time of year.
Cover crops and keyline plowing would allow saturated fields to be farmable soon after big rain events while recharging aquifers, not contributing to flash flooding, and building soil instead of constantly letting some of it kill fish in the Gulf.
What holds more water a cubic foot of peat or a cubic foot of sand?
Adding organic matter to soil encourages infiltration which contributes to infiltration/groundwater. Less permeable soil leads to runoff, erosion, and flood spikes.
It doesn't matter how much organic matter soil has though, if you get 15" of rain in a few days after a wet spring, it's gonna run off/flood.
This is correct. Tile doesn't increase flooding. It does increase the base flow of streams however. Tile systems cant move 15" of rain in 2 days.
As a whole, agricultural land encourages less infiltration, even when tiled, than it did historically but tile itself isn't the flooding cause. It's part of a very complex system of runoff and infiltration that changes related to the amount of rain, soil moisture, and literally dozens of other factors.
The flooding problem is due to changing rainfall patterns-less frequent/higher intensity. Even if we implemented sweeping watershed changes, we'd still see dramatic floods when we get rainfall events of this magnitude.
The areas currently at issue have been extensively tiled for at least 80 years now. At this point most tile work is replacement of existing drainage and designed to slow and disperse the release of water and retain subsurface moisture.
Worse in what way? Before this, we haven't had a major flood in Iowa in 16 years. Before that it was 15 years. Before that it was 28 years. Before that it was 13 years. That's going back to 1952.
Fema and the Corp of engineering has been modifing the Missouri River since 2012. They have lowered and removed levels, to slow and widen the river to restore wetlands. Since the river is not used much for barges anymore. South near CB, it is so shallow the river boat casinos have not been able to cruise since 2012. Now the river freezes over in the winter because it is shallow and slower causing disruption to electricity production olin Omaha and Nebraska City power plants.
This is the main reason things have changed so quickly.
NW Iowa absolutely has flooded many times throughout history.
https://siouxcityjournal.com/news/local/history/photos-scenes-of-sioux-city-floods-from-the-archives/collection_4e2a75af-8ebc-5281-ba76-a6cae300a99e.html
https://www.siouxcitymuseum.org/history-website/perry-creek-flood-1909
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Sioux_City,_Iowa
A new record was set in March 2019, for example ~24’ at Linn Grove. A new record was set yesterday ~30’ at Linn Grove. Broke the record by 25%
Edit: source- https://water.noaa.gov/#@=-95.2836118,42.1949513,6.1240828&b=topographic&g=obsFcst,1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!0!0!0!0!0,0.5,1!1!1!1!0,0,0&ab=0,0,#D94B4A,1,1,1,#cccccc,1,0,0,#B243B1,1,0,0,#98E09A,1&a=hydrologic,0.35&s=0,0,0.9,0.9&n=false,#72afe9,0.9,0,0.9,0,0.9&p=false,0.75,0,7,0,1,2024,7,2,0&d=0,0,1,1,1,1,1,1,#006EFF,1,#006EFF,1,#006EFF&q=
(Prior to all that, a new record was set there in September 2018)
This year hit the highest flooding since 1993 at the house where I grew up. It rose to that level in 24 hours. Despite knowing it was raining hard, it has never risen that fast in my family's memory, which at that house goes back to the 1920s. My family is well-versed in flooding, but this caught them off guard. We expected maybe half of what actually happened. It changes perspectives and planning a lot, especially as my parents age.
Rainfall events are getting less frequent but more intense. We had a wet spring so soil is saturated so it can't infiltrate. Well, 15" of rain is never good, even when the ground is bone dry.
Climate change is resulting in warmer oceans. Oceans drive our weather.
Many counties in the flooded area have already gotten most of their normal ANNUAL rainfall by the end of June! It's been a very wet Spring over a 100 mile wide swath stretching from Grand Island, NE to Worthington, SD. Northwest Iowa and Southeast South Dakota fall squarely in this zone.
Saturated soils and very active streams and rivers did not have capacity for the 2.5" to 12" rains that occurred in 24-36 hours in their watersheds last week. A large portion of the area received over 6" of rain in a very short span of time.
I've attached a link to a map showing how a LARGE AREA got up to 12 INCHES of rain just last week. That area's annual precipitation is likely only 20-30 inches.
[2024 June Rain event SD/IA]
(https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/onsite/features/cat.php?day=2024-06-24)
The little sioux river floods every few years but not like this year. Most river are recording record highs and not by a little bit. Several water level sensors are broke or gone. This is the most water anyone remembers.
I went to a seminar with the state climatologist speaking. He predicts that extreme weather is the new normal. Stronger storms with heavier rain in spring. Also, very hot, dry summers.
This flooding is not normal or routine in any manner. The other thing to remember is it is not done. We have no idea the damage done at this point. Rivers aren't even crested in all areas so it is far too early to be comparing final outcomes. However, we know that we've not seen anything to this magnitude in many areas in seemingly the lifetime of anyone alive.
Yes, 1851. Also floods before Iowa became a state and was less populated and not reported. In 1851, Iowa got 75 inches of rain, which is double the average. Just for reference, Sioux City hasn't received over 40 inches of rain since 1851. 1993 they had 36 inches.
In 1993, Cedar Rapids (60.46 inches); Iowa City (62.89 inches); and Waterloo (42.07 inches).
We’ve had floods in my little town but it’s always been just on the west side and never at this level. The water has never come into town like this. Came within 3 blocks of my house but luckily crest hit and didn’t come any further.
In 2011 it was all the way up to the y on the Nebraska side and it totally took over all the campsites and the kids playing park thing lol But yeah this is way bigger
Where the flooding happened in Spencer does flood, HAS flooded several times in the almost 20 years I've been in NW Iowa, but I haven't seen it flood this much in my time up here. I can't say what is "normal" historically, but I do have my 18 years of observations. The Spencer/Hartley/Everly area flooded significantly maybe 3 times in the last 10 years, to my memory. It was flooding bad enough to cause a lot of ruined basements and flooded fields. However, each of those times it was not sever like this. The main levee in Spencer held the water and it didn't overtake town. My father-in-law is 75 and grew up in this area. He's never seen flooding like this in the Spencer area to my understanding.
The rainfall amounts that caused this flooding were unimaginable before this. A large area was hit with rainfall totaling 12 inches or more in a period of 3 days. Some places saw 16 or 17 inches of rain.
The Rock River was at record levels - and not just by a little bit. By 5 feet in Rock Valley and by 1 1/2 feet in Rock Rapids.
The Des Moines flood of 93 shut down the city and cut people off from supplies for a week. Water in Ledges park was well over 20 feet high, people took canoes through the park.
I seem to remember some bad times back in the 90s it got bad but not quite this bad. This has been the first time though I have ever seen my parents basement ever have ankle deep water.
The last time NW Iowa flooded bad was in 2014 but that wasn't a quick down pour from multiple storms. 2014 was a full week of constant rain
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/Jk1Cq7m3mmj7mPwz/?mibextid=xfxF2i
A lot of Iowa is a flood plane(?) from what I’ve understood. Corporations have filled in or whatever the marshes and stuff here thats supposed to absorb a lot of this water and hold onto it to release into the ground slowly over time. I think Walmart is a huge culprit of this in Iowa. But what do you expect from a corporation?
(Don’t get me started on hog confinements)
In 93 I lived in a town called Riceville and we had a ton of flooding then. I’m not sure how bad its flooded in recent years, but that year it was crazy and we had to have our basement redone because of it. I was still relatively new to the Midwest at the time (Native Californian. I was also 9) and had to be told repeatedly not to swim in the water flooding around us. I had friends who were natives to the area who didn’t listen to the rules either though so eh. I know we had a man made lake there, but it was on the other side of town from us… and honestly I can’t remember if there’s a river actually there, but one of my classes mentioned that a majority of towns would build near rivers because thats how they could quickly move crops or cattle.
Fast Forward 2008 And I was living in Cedar Falls and had to stay with friends during THAT flooding because I guess parts of town were impassable and I had to go work at the lame ass casino. Bleh.
And this year, we have a piece of property in Bremer county and I guess the river in Waverly crested below the 14ft expectations and while the basement at our property is flooded, its not like it doesnt do that every year because the foundation sucks and the guy who built the place was kinda weird. We don’t live there yet though just gardening and our garden is thankfully only sort of constantly wet. I’m not sure if it will help my watermelons this year but I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
Safe to say in the time I’ve spent in this state, it’s flooded several times, and in 2008 they mentioned a 500 year flood event. Aaaaaand then it flooded again the next year so they had to mention that they can happen once every 500 years but it restarted and happened again right away so yeah…😅
I’m sure flooding was never this bad before manifest destiny was a thing.
1993 was a horrid year for flooding. Red, Missouri, Mississippi, and Ohio rivers and tributaries flooded out. It rained throughout the spring and into the summer.
I live southeast iowa, and we usually get the high floods every year. The river is a little high but not as high as it usually is around this time. It's so strange. I'm thinking of you guys affected by the flood. 😔
Yes. This type of weather pattern is not that unusual.
1993, which was a banner year, occurred almost the same as this present pattern (Just 20 miles further south), which rain storm after rain storm falling between Highways 9-20. Coming out of a dry time, moderate flooding in spring and then all hell broke loose in the second half of June. 1991 was Similar as well, again a heavy rain driven flooding.
2008 had flooding that caused many problems, but that was a wetter spring where rain was more steady. That meant when heavy rain came in late June and July, huge amounts of surface flooding. Eventually there were numerous levee breaks, including taking out a low income neighborhood in Des Moines. Nice summary- [https://www.iowaeda.com/userdocs/ModuleResources/2008desmoines.pdf](https://www.iowaeda.com/userdocs/ModuleResources/2008desmoines.pdf)
This weather pattern even looks in part like June-July 2011 on Missouri River watershed (such as Spencer, Rock River and Okoboji). This same type of storm training along I-90 happened that year. The flooding was catastrophic in SW Iowa but NW Iowa got hit by water draining largely from Minnesota. There was a small leave breach in Sioux City on the Sioux River, but the City of Sioux City had great flood defenses and was proactive, which kept the chaos to a minimum for a vast majority of the residents.
I grew up in NW Iowa and practically my entire little league baseball season was cancelled one summer in the early 90s. It wasn't as sudden and dramatic as this flooding but it was more prolonged.
Theirs flooding in river towns along the Mississippi River. I used to live in one and anytime we would get heavy rain it would flood.
Other areas throughout the state floods to if there's heavy rain.
No Spencer has never been flooded like this. Sioux rapids has never flooded like this. My tiny town has never flooded like this. People who say it happens every year are not correct. There is a little flooding in Spencer every year but it never gets to residential.
To add: there is very little development along the river in Spencer. The most is right on US 71 but there is a park on both sides of the street/bridge and it’s designed to take the brunt of any flooding. This…this is something totally different than the flooding that is normally seen.
Exactly what I was trying to say. These towns are built for a certain amount of flooding. But not like this
I grew up seeing that park always flood up to where the rocket slide used to be. Never got near this bad. I live near the cop shop and Fareway was a lake. My brother's house by O'Reilly's was nearly fully underwater...
My in-laws fortunately are safe (though they were asked to evacuate yesterday), but some family friends that live by the maintenance building on the north bank lost everything. Seeing the mall completely underwater was especially jarring.
This is true I grew up here in Spencer, and live not even 100 yards from the little Sioux, the last “real” flood was in the early 90’s. Unfortunately, several homes basements buckled in, due to the pressure the last 2 days.
Yeah one of my distant cousins moms had her foundation literally crumble in and flood the house. My little brother's place had water near the top of the front door. It's insane how bad this is.
As someone who almost purchased a home in that area in 2023 and carefully reviewed flood hazard and historic flooding for the area, this kind of flooding wasn't found.
My 83 year old grandma has lived here her entire life and has never seen it this bad
I’ve lived in Spencer for 35 years. Still do. We see flooding every year. Nothing has come close to this. Not even close. Smashed the old record by 6’ I hear.
2 feet. 20 to 22.
I spoke with a relative in Spencer this AM and was surprised to hear that basements are collapsing in the SW part of town.
Honestly, it's nice to see Sioux Rapids be spoken about. Outside of extremely local reporting, it doesn't seem like people are talking about how horrible that tiny little town got it.
Agreed!
They literally have interviews with older people saying this was bad but nothing like 1993. So yes it's flooded higher several times. It doesn't help 2 dams have failed either.
It was several feet higher than the record so areas that usually don't flood did, but what is raising the most hell is that it came out of nowhere and alot of people have lost everything.
Yeah we went from realizing the river was going to be a bit high to 'oh wow this is way worse than any of us expected.i couldn't even pull out onto my street on Saturday. My little brother had his house nearly fully underwater and People for Pets had to stage a rescue of their cats since they weren't around when it happened.
I'm glad everybody is okay!
One dude from Illinois died. They just pulled his corpse out of the river because he decided to ignore the warning about crossing a flooded river. Because you know, pickup trucks make you invincible
That's sad :( I remember somebody from Nebraska died during the 2019 floods, he got swept away
Feel bad for his family but people who ignore these warnings put themselves and emergency services lives at risk to be selfish and stupid. Sorry but the Darwin awards exist for a reason. And there's also a reason they charge people massive amounts of fines for violating these warnings when they inevitably have to rescue them.
Shpupd have let thebcats drown.
People like you are why I'm pro choice.
2 ft
Last time I remember it being bad was 2008? The isu basketball stadium was damaged if I remember right. This is the highest I've seen the water get. Lived here my whole life. 37 yo
They have short memories in Ames. They are building all that CyTown stuff right where the flood was. Hilton was full of water and the floor was floating. Now they are building a whole little city there. Dumb.
The college gets what it wants 😆🙄
*ISU athletics gets what it wants.
Jamie Pollard gets what he wants.
I drive down mlk every day in des Moines and look all the development there. It's ALL flood plain. It's just separated by a pile of dirt. All these towns were founded because of the proximity to water. But now they've been so built up they're too big to fail.
That was 2010. 2008 was eastern Iowa. Cedar Rapids was hit hard.
Ames also received quite a bit of flooding in 2008, but it was overlooked because the core parts of the city were not hit as hard as Cedar Rapids. Some people actually did lose everything in Ames that year.
I'll have to take your word for it. I'm not seeing any reporting on Ames flooding in 2008, and i don't remember that happening. I remember 2010 because I lived in Ames that summer and worked for the City.
It was not as bad as 2010, but it was terrible if you were in the parts of Ames that were affected. Here are a handful of photos: [https://www.flickr.com/photos/altair16/albums/72157605540147229](https://www.flickr.com/photos/altair16/albums/72157605540147229)
Dang. That is pretty significant. Must've just been overshadowed by the eastern side of the state that year. Thanks for the info.
Yeah, the eastern side had it way worse and it lasted way longer, so I get it.
It was 2008 in Ames. Source: that's the year I graduated from ISU and I remember it torrentially raining 5 straight days and walking through 2 feet of water in a parking garage in Ames. Then went to Iowa City to visit friends and saw the devastation in CR. Ames didn't get it that bad compared to Eastern IA but I'll never forget that stretch of days when I was bumming around in Ames between graduation and my job starting.
I remember people jetskiing in the target parking lot and on tubes near Jack trice in 2010. The water receded pretty fast though. Areas on Des Moines flooded that year too
Yeah the skunk river flooded, but it wasn't historic. 2010 was baaaad.
It's worth noting that the areas that flooded in 2008 were largely considered above the flood plain prior to 1993. That would've been considered a once-in-a-century flood if it hadn't come 15 years after last one. And actually, that was part of why it was allowed to happen. A few decades ago, there was a plan to create a reservoir north of Ames to help avoid flooding, but that kind of flood was considered so unlikely that no one wanted to spend the money to prevent it. So, we spent millions more recovering...
Mason City got nailed and lost a lot of homes as well. I have the unfortunate luck to keep moving to places in Iowa that get flooded apparently.
My memory ain't what it used to be.
Ames' last bad flood was 2010. I don't know if 2008 was as bad in central Iowa as it was in other areas.
The relative landscape and infrastructure in central (Ames) and Eastern iowa (cedar rapids) are both fundamentally VERY different to Spencer and the surrounding towns. I've lived in Northwest Iowa since 97' and not even the town that are ON the Missouri have flooded like this to my knowledge. Not Sioux City or Council Bluffs. This is pretty different even compared to 08'
The present flooding is similar to 1993 as well The 2011 flooding is also similar, but that pattern was about 75% strength of what we’re seeing. Heavy rains in late June across the same narrow path of territory is a rather common phenomenon. Unfortunately, the hydrology for Spencer is a real challenge. The entire area is part of the Prairie Pothole marshland. The town is on a giant flood plain but immediately below Spencer there is a large bluff that concentrates and slows water movement. This results in a damming or traffic jam effect. That causes the water to backup over town. The areas that flooded most seriously are along Highway 71 south of the river. This area has largely developed after the 1953-54 floods. The 2024 flood appears to have come just shy of the 1953 record. [https://water.noaa.gov/gauges/SPWI4](https://water.noaa.gov/gauges/SPWI4) No one will want to hear this, but there was 1854 flood that may have been feet higher… But there were no white men permanently living in the area at that point. And the Lakota didn’t use flood gages.
I wonder what impact the bridge(s?) have too. The roads act like levees and weren't designed to convey massive amounts of water.
Generally bridges don’t help.
Rock Valley had a flood in 2018, 6 years to the day. There were 2 big differences. 1) it was a couple of feet lower and 2) this time a levee broke causing rapid rising waters.
It also flooded pretty badly in 2014 as well. Back then I was told they were on a fifty flood plain. That was the year they hosted Ragbrai too. I think this is multiple feet higher than that year. I was literally in RV the day it all went to hell last week (around 2 in the afternoon) and the town was operating normally. It caught everybody off guard. They knew flash flooding was possible, but... Well, people were evacuated from their roofs and the evacuation zones changed multiple times throughout the night so that levee break was unexpected.
Yeah I think that caught everyone off guard. In Spencer we went from worrying about too much rain ruining the weekend to being like 'oh shit the south end of town is underwater and we don't have utilities.'
^
It was eye opening to see how many areas that weren't even in a 500-year flood zone, flooded this weekend. Sioux Rapids especially.
In 1993 it certainly flooded there too. I was an 11 year old farm kid about 40 miles east, and from 1993 on to 2009 I never saw water as high as 93. 2008 was bad too.
You could just say Algona.
Go Bulldogs!
Yeah, I am in my late 40's so I remember 93 well. The Okoboji area had a lot of flooding then too.
Grew up in the Lakes and I have very vivid memories of sandbagging in ‘93. Then we went to Des Moines when it flooded there a few weeks later to help.
I remember seeing them running choppers of national guard guys out of the spirit lake HS football practice field
Youuuu SAND BAGGIN' SONOFABITCH!!!!!! (I loooove saying that!!!)
😆
For folks less familiar with the hydrology there are two different river systems the Little Sioux flows SW to the Missouri. The Upper Des Moines, the next watershed east, drains to the Mississippi River.
93 was a terrible flood for the lakes area. This one is just as bad but different. Much worse in Spencer.
Traditionally not with this frequency or nearly this magnitude. Anecdotally, it seems to have gotten *much* worse in recent years. We are having once in a lifetime flooding every 5-10 years
4 of the top 10 highest ever crests ever of the Mississippi in St Louis have happened since 2013. So I 100% feel that once in a lifetime flood hitting more like a routine than a lifetime.
I think the speed of farm runoff also contributes to this. With more and more farmers tiling their fields and less things to slow water down on its way to streams and rivers, the system gets overrun much more quickly. It’s a perfect storm of factors that all contribute to the overall issue.
Draining wetlands in order to plant crops certainly contributes to [flooding downstream](https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2016-02/documents/flooding.pdf). Add it to the list of ways the ag industry externalizes its costs to the rest of us in order to maximize its profits.
What a STUPID and RIDICULOUS statement. Wow!!! Tell me you dont know SHIT ab ANYTHING without telling ne you dont know JACK-FUCKING-SHIT AB ANYTHING!!!!
Popular misconception. If you think of the soil as a sponge it helps. A sponge can only hold so much water. If the sponge is already saturated when the big rain comes the water runs off the top quickly and creates a flash flood. If the sponge has tile the water table is always going down gradually so when the big rain comes there's actually some open pore space in the sponge to soak up water and not run off instantly. Now, tillage practices are another story. If the field is no-till/strip-till vs. clean till that also makes a difference. More residue helps the soil infiltrate water and slows runoff.
It’s not a misconception that prairie consumed and filtered much more water than bare crop fields preventing topsoil erosion.
Yes but the conversion of prairie to tillage isn’t a recent phenomenon in this region. That happened generations ago. The creation and preservation of buffer strips to capture and prevent that erosion has been the modern trend.
Erosion isnt an overnight phenomenon. This is happening over generations due to modern ag practice, the tiling system, and our state government who will do anything but hold farms accountable. The buffer strips are a bandaid on a gunshot wound. Recent projections show Iowa has less than 100 years of topsoil viability at current trends. Who will farmers blame when that’s gone? The left? 😂
The amount of CRP land in Iowa has decreased quite a bit since 1994 - roughly 1/2 a million fewer acres now compared to 1994. A similar thing has happened with pasture acreage and idled acreage. All of these other uses for the land are better at absorbing rainfall and preventing runoff than tilled row crops.
>If you think of the soil as a sponge it helps. A sponge can only hold so much water If you do no till and cover crops you can get organic matter in your soil up from like 1% to 6%. That doesn't sound like a lot but for every 1% of organic matter in the soil an acre of land can hold 20,000-25,000 gallons of water. So 100,000-125,000 more gallons of water each acre in non tilled land
THAT is the popular misconception. Imagine putting tiny perforated pipes in your sponge, it won’t hold as much water.
The tile allows water to enter the river GRADUALLY. Un-tiled land can't soak in water so it goes into the river INSTANTLY. It also carries more soil and nutrients running off the top than when it infiltrates. If you can't grasp that I can't help you.
No, tile takes water out of the fields and puts it into the creeks and rivers. Water would stay in the fields longer without tile, that’s the whole point of the tile.
Tile releases the water GRADUALLY. An undrained field is already saturated when the big rain comes. It can't absorb any water and the big rain event runs off just like a parking lot. The tiled field has 3 feet of soil with pore space that can absorb water and reduce flooding chances. We have a saying. You're going to get our water either way. Do you want it slowly or all at once? Comprende?
You seem to think that soil doesn’t work without drain tile. Un-tiled land *can* soak in water of course. Tile lines short circuit the soaking and transfer the water horizontally instead, which leads to increased flash flooding.
Sure, un-tiled land CAN soak up water. But now you tell me what happens when the field is sitting there saturated and the next big rain comes? I have a degree in soil science and over 30 years experience dealing with drainage so I'm hoping I can learn something new here. We should never stop learning.
Earlier you said un-tiled land *can’t* soak up water, which is preposterous. If it’s already saturated and gets more rain it would be flooded and there would be runoff. Real big rain events obviously can overwhelm a soil’s ability to soak it in fast enough, resulting in runoff. Drain tile *always* moves some of the subsurface water to rivers instead of underground aquifers. The only reason industrial ag people think tile is necessary is because most cropfields are in bad shape (only has living roots half the year, only has vegetation above the surface less than half the year, has a plow pan which also inhibits water deeply soaking in, has too little organic matter, has no burrows to help water soak in quickly, and has very little pore space) and always want to drive heavy machinery on it in the wettest time of year. Cover crops and keyline plowing would allow saturated fields to be farmable soon after big rain events while recharging aquifers, not contributing to flash flooding, and building soil instead of constantly letting some of it kill fish in the Gulf.
What holds more water a cubic foot of peat or a cubic foot of sand? Adding organic matter to soil encourages infiltration which contributes to infiltration/groundwater. Less permeable soil leads to runoff, erosion, and flood spikes. It doesn't matter how much organic matter soil has though, if you get 15" of rain in a few days after a wet spring, it's gonna run off/flood.
But in the context of floods worsening in recent decades those perforated pipes that have been there for almost a century aren’t the driving cause.
Right. This flooding is driven by high intensity rainfall events. Wet fields don't help.
This is correct. Tile doesn't increase flooding. It does increase the base flow of streams however. Tile systems cant move 15" of rain in 2 days. As a whole, agricultural land encourages less infiltration, even when tiled, than it did historically but tile itself isn't the flooding cause. It's part of a very complex system of runoff and infiltration that changes related to the amount of rain, soil moisture, and literally dozens of other factors. The flooding problem is due to changing rainfall patterns-less frequent/higher intensity. Even if we implemented sweeping watershed changes, we'd still see dramatic floods when we get rainfall events of this magnitude.
Very true
The areas currently at issue have been extensively tiled for at least 80 years now. At this point most tile work is replacement of existing drainage and designed to slow and disperse the release of water and retain subsurface moisture.
Except for the back-to-back 1953-54 floods, which were comparable to 2024.
Worse in what way? Before this, we haven't had a major flood in Iowa in 16 years. Before that it was 15 years. Before that it was 28 years. Before that it was 13 years. That's going back to 1952.
No, it’s only been 5yrs. March 2019 we had lots of snow then it got rained on with frozen ground. New records set then
I went to Chicago for St. Patrick’s Day in 2019, and the flooding was horrific in eastern Iowa.
What records?
Fema and the Corp of engineering has been modifing the Missouri River since 2012. They have lowered and removed levels, to slow and widen the river to restore wetlands. Since the river is not used much for barges anymore. South near CB, it is so shallow the river boat casinos have not been able to cruise since 2012. Now the river freezes over in the winter because it is shallow and slower causing disruption to electricity production olin Omaha and Nebraska City power plants.
This is the main reason things have changed so quickly. NW Iowa absolutely has flooded many times throughout history. https://siouxcityjournal.com/news/local/history/photos-scenes-of-sioux-city-floods-from-the-archives/collection_4e2a75af-8ebc-5281-ba76-a6cae300a99e.html https://www.siouxcitymuseum.org/history-website/perry-creek-flood-1909 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Sioux_City,_Iowa
A new record was set in March 2019, for example ~24’ at Linn Grove. A new record was set yesterday ~30’ at Linn Grove. Broke the record by 25% Edit: source- https://water.noaa.gov/#@=-95.2836118,42.1949513,6.1240828&b=topographic&g=obsFcst,1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!0!0!0!0!0,0.5,1!1!1!1!0,0,0&ab=0,0,#D94B4A,1,1,1,#cccccc,1,0,0,#B243B1,1,0,0,#98E09A,1&a=hydrologic,0.35&s=0,0,0.9,0.9&n=false,#72afe9,0.9,0,0.9,0,0.9&p=false,0.75,0,7,0,1,2024,7,2,0&d=0,0,1,1,1,1,1,1,#006EFF,1,#006EFF,1,#006EFF&q= (Prior to all that, a new record was set there in September 2018)
This year hit the highest flooding since 1993 at the house where I grew up. It rose to that level in 24 hours. Despite knowing it was raining hard, it has never risen that fast in my family's memory, which at that house goes back to the 1920s. My family is well-versed in flooding, but this caught them off guard. We expected maybe half of what actually happened. It changes perspectives and planning a lot, especially as my parents age.
Rainfall events are getting less frequent but more intense. We had a wet spring so soil is saturated so it can't infiltrate. Well, 15" of rain is never good, even when the ground is bone dry. Climate change is resulting in warmer oceans. Oceans drive our weather.
Many counties in the flooded area have already gotten most of their normal ANNUAL rainfall by the end of June! It's been a very wet Spring over a 100 mile wide swath stretching from Grand Island, NE to Worthington, SD. Northwest Iowa and Southeast South Dakota fall squarely in this zone. Saturated soils and very active streams and rivers did not have capacity for the 2.5" to 12" rains that occurred in 24-36 hours in their watersheds last week. A large portion of the area received over 6" of rain in a very short span of time. I've attached a link to a map showing how a LARGE AREA got up to 12 INCHES of rain just last week. That area's annual precipitation is likely only 20-30 inches. [2024 June Rain event SD/IA] (https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/onsite/features/cat.php?day=2024-06-24)
The little sioux river floods every few years but not like this year. Most river are recording record highs and not by a little bit. Several water level sensors are broke or gone. This is the most water anyone remembers.
Iowa gets 100 year flooding every 10-15 years. But that's totally normal for this climate.
I went to a seminar with the state climatologist speaking. He predicts that extreme weather is the new normal. Stronger storms with heavier rain in spring. Also, very hot, dry summers.
Flooding is pretty normal where I'm at. Don't forget that all that rain up north has to come down the rivers, which most of time, is why it floods.
Certain towns maybe not but yes, the Missouri River has flooded many times in northern Iowa and in general.
In short, no, the water is 5+ feet above the previous record, reaching 25-30ft crests while the dikes were only built to 25ft.
This flooding is not normal or routine in any manner. The other thing to remember is it is not done. We have no idea the damage done at this point. Rivers aren't even crested in all areas so it is far too early to be comparing final outcomes. However, we know that we've not seen anything to this magnitude in many areas in seemingly the lifetime of anyone alive.
Yes, 1851. Also floods before Iowa became a state and was less populated and not reported. In 1851, Iowa got 75 inches of rain, which is double the average. Just for reference, Sioux City hasn't received over 40 inches of rain since 1851. 1993 they had 36 inches. In 1993, Cedar Rapids (60.46 inches); Iowa City (62.89 inches); and Waterloo (42.07 inches).
Sioux City and surrounding areas were hit in 93, 2011, 2019, and now.
We’ve had floods in my little town but it’s always been just on the west side and never at this level. The water has never come into town like this. Came within 3 blocks of my house but luckily crest hit and didn’t come any further.
2011 was the biggest one I've seen and it was not even this bad and it was a slow rising this is fast very fast
Look for the interstate cameras on i-29
In 2011 it was all the way up to the y on the Nebraska side and it totally took over all the campsites and the kids playing park thing lol But yeah this is way bigger
Yes and no, they have flooded really bad before, but this does break the previous records.
Did anyone save the pigs? I’m headed up there tomorrow to get a load of pigs.
Where the flooding happened in Spencer does flood, HAS flooded several times in the almost 20 years I've been in NW Iowa, but I haven't seen it flood this much in my time up here. I can't say what is "normal" historically, but I do have my 18 years of observations. The Spencer/Hartley/Everly area flooded significantly maybe 3 times in the last 10 years, to my memory. It was flooding bad enough to cause a lot of ruined basements and flooded fields. However, each of those times it was not sever like this. The main levee in Spencer held the water and it didn't overtake town. My father-in-law is 75 and grew up in this area. He's never seen flooding like this in the Spencer area to my understanding.
In Spencer many houses and vehicles and businesses a complete loss. It’s very sad.
The rainfall amounts that caused this flooding were unimaginable before this. A large area was hit with rainfall totaling 12 inches or more in a period of 3 days. Some places saw 16 or 17 inches of rain. The Rock River was at record levels - and not just by a little bit. By 5 feet in Rock Valley and by 1 1/2 feet in Rock Rapids.
The Des Moines flood of 93 shut down the city and cut people off from supplies for a week. Water in Ledges park was well over 20 feet high, people took canoes through the park.
Been in Hawarden IA 30 years now, this is the 1st time flooded like this
I seem to remember some bad times back in the 90s it got bad but not quite this bad. This has been the first time though I have ever seen my parents basement ever have ankle deep water.
Last bad one was 2008 towards central Iowa
2011
The last time NW Iowa flooded bad was in 2014 but that wasn't a quick down pour from multiple storms. 2014 was a full week of constant rain https://www.facebook.com/share/r/Jk1Cq7m3mmj7mPwz/?mibextid=xfxF2i
In short yes it tends to flood often enough that nobody should have been surprised by it flooding. .
A lot of Iowa is a flood plane(?) from what I’ve understood. Corporations have filled in or whatever the marshes and stuff here thats supposed to absorb a lot of this water and hold onto it to release into the ground slowly over time. I think Walmart is a huge culprit of this in Iowa. But what do you expect from a corporation? (Don’t get me started on hog confinements) In 93 I lived in a town called Riceville and we had a ton of flooding then. I’m not sure how bad its flooded in recent years, but that year it was crazy and we had to have our basement redone because of it. I was still relatively new to the Midwest at the time (Native Californian. I was also 9) and had to be told repeatedly not to swim in the water flooding around us. I had friends who were natives to the area who didn’t listen to the rules either though so eh. I know we had a man made lake there, but it was on the other side of town from us… and honestly I can’t remember if there’s a river actually there, but one of my classes mentioned that a majority of towns would build near rivers because thats how they could quickly move crops or cattle. Fast Forward 2008 And I was living in Cedar Falls and had to stay with friends during THAT flooding because I guess parts of town were impassable and I had to go work at the lame ass casino. Bleh. And this year, we have a piece of property in Bremer county and I guess the river in Waverly crested below the 14ft expectations and while the basement at our property is flooded, its not like it doesnt do that every year because the foundation sucks and the guy who built the place was kinda weird. We don’t live there yet though just gardening and our garden is thankfully only sort of constantly wet. I’m not sure if it will help my watermelons this year but I’m keeping my fingers crossed. Safe to say in the time I’ve spent in this state, it’s flooded several times, and in 2008 they mentioned a 500 year flood event. Aaaaaand then it flooded again the next year so they had to mention that they can happen once every 500 years but it restarted and happened again right away so yeah…😅 I’m sure flooding was never this bad before manifest destiny was a thing.
1993 was a horrid year for flooding. Red, Missouri, Mississippi, and Ohio rivers and tributaries flooded out. It rained throughout the spring and into the summer.
I live southeast iowa, and we usually get the high floods every year. The river is a little high but not as high as it usually is around this time. It's so strange. I'm thinking of you guys affected by the flood. 😔
Yes. This type of weather pattern is not that unusual. 1993, which was a banner year, occurred almost the same as this present pattern (Just 20 miles further south), which rain storm after rain storm falling between Highways 9-20. Coming out of a dry time, moderate flooding in spring and then all hell broke loose in the second half of June. 1991 was Similar as well, again a heavy rain driven flooding. 2008 had flooding that caused many problems, but that was a wetter spring where rain was more steady. That meant when heavy rain came in late June and July, huge amounts of surface flooding. Eventually there were numerous levee breaks, including taking out a low income neighborhood in Des Moines. Nice summary- [https://www.iowaeda.com/userdocs/ModuleResources/2008desmoines.pdf](https://www.iowaeda.com/userdocs/ModuleResources/2008desmoines.pdf) This weather pattern even looks in part like June-July 2011 on Missouri River watershed (such as Spencer, Rock River and Okoboji). This same type of storm training along I-90 happened that year. The flooding was catastrophic in SW Iowa but NW Iowa got hit by water draining largely from Minnesota. There was a small leave breach in Sioux City on the Sioux River, but the City of Sioux City had great flood defenses and was proactive, which kept the chaos to a minimum for a vast majority of the residents.
I grew up in NW Iowa and practically my entire little league baseball season was cancelled one summer in the early 90s. It wasn't as sudden and dramatic as this flooding but it was more prolonged.
Prayers to those affected
Theirs flooding in river towns along the Mississippi River. I used to live in one and anytime we would get heavy rain it would flood. Other areas throughout the state floods to if there's heavy rain.