The flood projection

Bob CollinsBob Collins Apr 11, 2009
6

(This was originally posted on Friday morning but the chart has been updated with the Saturday morning river observations. There was no change in the projection in the last 12 hours.)

I still haven’t come up with a particularly enlightening graphical representation of the changing forecasts for the Red River, which is expected to rise to about the same level next week that it did at the height of the flood threat a few weeks ago.

So I’m going with the tried-and-true system of just keeping track of the actual projections from the National Weather Service over time, which allows us to compare the changing projections and also compare them to the actual results.

Today, for example, the current projection for the weekend is almost a foot a foot-and-a-half higher than the projection for the same period was on Tuesday. So without rain — fingers crossed — perhaps this means more water will move through earlier and keep the crest lower. Or maybe it’ll mean the crest will come sooner. Or maybe it means neither.

From the looks of the tail end of map above, it looks like the crest will be a week from today at 39 feet.

If you’re a homeowner in the area, how would you plan?

Forecast date

(7 a.m.)
Actual
Projection

issued on 4/7
4/8
4/9
4/10
4/11
4/12
4/13
4/14
4/15
Thrs 4/9
31.6
31.3
Fri 4/10
31.6
30.8
31
31.7
Sat 4/11
31.93
30.3
30.3
31.4
31.9
Sun 4/12
32.06
30.2
30.4
31.8
32.7
32.7
Mon 4/13
32.28
31.8
32
33.3
34.2
34.2
33.1
Tue 4/14
32.93
34
34
35.5
36.0
36.0
34.9
34.1
Wed 4/15
33.7
36.3
37.3
37.7
37.7
36.5
36.0
34.3
Thrs 4/16
37.3
38.6
38.9
39.0
37.7
37.4
35.1
34.5
Fri 4/17
39.3
39.3
38.0
38.0
36.2
35.2
Sat 4/18
39.0
37.8
37.7
37.0
35.5
Sun 4/19
37.3
37.1
36.8
35.3
Mon 4/20
37.3
36.5
36.4
35.0
Tue 4/21
 
34.6

All of the indicated projections (unless indicated otherwise) are based on the evening flood forecast.