Talk:1997 Red River flood

This article is quite Manitoba-centric -- quite inappropriate considering most of the damage was done in Grand Forks. Unfortunately, I don't have much direct knowledge of the floods, so this is going to take a bit of research. Care to help? --Alexwcovington 16:08, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

I don't think it's style to use the definite article in the title. - Montréalais 17:27, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

• I agree. Perhaps "Red River Flood, 1997" would be better. --Alexwcovington 18:26, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

I'm not very happy with the title of this article. It seems a little confusing to have a comma in a title. Would "Red River Flood of 1997" be better? --MatthewUND 06:17, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

I think it's fine either way. Subsurd 07:35, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Ugh, now it's too North Dakota-centric. --AtomicCactus 07:42, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Questioning snowfall amount

This statement needs clarification: “There was overabundant snowfall the past winter. A total of 98.6 inches (250 cm) of snow accumulated.”

In what city was this number? Does “accumulation” mean the snow that was on the ground at the end of winter or the total snowfall over the winter? My recollection is that for Fargo the previous record snowfall for a winter was 89.9 inches, and then Fargo got about 120 inches of snowfall in the winter of 1996-97, exceeding the previous record by a third. This is my unresearched recollection.

Olivia

• If I recall, (I am at work right now but will do some serious editing when I get home tonight), the 98.6 was in canada. Fargo received well over 100 inches that year. I have a few taped news broadcasts from that year. Let me break them out of storage and fire up the VCR (haven't done that in years). I'll see if we can balance this article out a bit.--Brian ^{(How am I doing?)} 15:36, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Should add table of final crest levels

I'd think it would be informative to provide a table of the final river crest levels for each major city along the river. In light of the current flooding of the Red in 2006, I've seen incorrect information pop up in current news reports comparing this year's flood to 1997 (GF's crest of 54 feet in 1997 was recently used to incorrectly contrast against Fargo's projected crest of 37.5 feet for this year). --Djamund 04 Apr 2006

I think that's a good idea. I wouldn't mind seeing a Fargo-Moorhead section either. Subsurd 18:36, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Causes of flood

As I remember, one of the problems involved the river flowing from south to north. The land in the south thawed earlier (naturally), but the water couldn't drain easily because further north the river was still choked with ice.

Image not from 1997?

The arial photo below the photo of the river gaudge seems to not be from 1997. The Blue Moose Bar and Grill building is not in the photo- at the time of the 1997 flood it was located just south of DeMers Ave between Opticare and the dike. The Pillsbary Bridge still has rails and ties on it. At the time of the flood, the bridge had been converted to a pedestrian bridge, with a fence lineing the sides. -JWGreen 13:37, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Correct I was there and suffered through ALL of it. There was over 100 inches of snow ON THE GROUND. We had a blizzard. The temperature rose above freezing, then it rained. Fargo got hit first - being south of Grand Forks some 75 miles, they experienced overland flooding first as a result of the frozen ground not being able to absorb the melting snow and rain runoff. The water literally ran across I-29 towards the river. All the bridges spanning the river at Grand Forks dammed the river ice and contributed to the rising waters. They dropped soot at dynamited the ice to no avail. Prior to the main dykes breaking that Friday night we were sandbagging to 35 feet - the figure they said would be the crest. (makeshift signs appeared after the flooding stating "35 feet my ass") The damage was unbelievable. Because Grand Forks is in a bend of the river - the water flowed through town (path of least resistance). In that water was everything you could imagine - animals, fuel oil, diesel,gas, and sewage. Dumpsters became lethal as they plowed through fences and into homes. Along the river neighborhoods on both sides were picnic tables in tress, and decks ripped free and travelling towards Canada.

I have a video I made the Wednesday after the crest. I worked at UND and rode an Oskosh snow plow into town to help retrieve computers at the federal building downtown. Even 4 days after the crest, the water was high enough to come into the back end of the snow plow as we slowly drove into town and back. Anyone wanting a DVD e-mail me and I will send it along with a written narrative. I now live in Sioux Falls SD, and what a difference 310 miles makes. As I write this the town of Fargo is struggling with a flood of even greater magnitude with hopes the dykes hold and they do not lose all. Time will tell. MSgtUSAFret (talk) 16:36, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

GA candidate

I plan on bringing the article up to Good article status in the next few weeks. I'm planning on using sources from two books I got at my campus's library and will search for online sources after that. If there are any errors, please correct them, and the article may be changed quite a bit as I create new sections for the information I find. --Nehrams2020 23:39, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I uploaded a photo of the amount of snow from 1997 to wikipedia commons, Image:1997snow.JPG. It isn't the best quality, but it definitly illustrates the amount of snow, which there isn't any photos of in the article. -JWGreen 00:25, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm interested where this measurment was taken, because without that information, the measurment means nothing. "The worst flood on record was in 1826, when settlers of the Selkirk Colony fled water reaching 36½ ft (11.1 m) above the river bed." Theres also no citation for the text. -JWGreen 18:38, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

If you can't find a source for it, remove it for now or make it a hidden comment and we can look for it later. I have a large amount of information on the fire in downtown Grand Forks. Should that be its own section, or do we want to limit it to two or three paragraphs? --Nehrams2020 05:44, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I think the fire is notable enough to have its own section. -JWGreen 21:18, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

As far as getting this to GA status, I think this article is well on its way. One thing that I think could be confusing is that, although parts of the article deal with the flood in Canada, most of the article is focused on the flood in the U.S. - namely in Grand Forks. Many of the sections (Origins, Preparations, Donations and damages, Criticism and blame, Recovery, Future flood prevention, and Cultural references) really only deal with the flood in Grand Forks. If I was unfamiliar with the events of 1997, I think I might find that a bit confusing. --MatthewUND^(talk) 23:29, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I had noticed that, and was going to add more sources for more mention on the Canadian floods, and I also realized that there is almost no information on Fargo either. The main reason that the article is mostly centered on Grand Forks is because most of the sources I have found (including books) focus on Grand Forks, but I'll start focusing my searches on the other areas later this week (I have 2 tests to study for). --Nehrams2020 23:44, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Would it be totally out of the question to break the article into 1997 Red River Flood in the United States and 1997 Red River Flood in Canada? We could keep 1997 Red River Flood as a brief overview that links to the other two articles. Since so much of what we have in the article focuses on the flood in the US, 1997 Red River Flood in the United States would be more than ready for GA status and 1997 Red River Flood in Canada would have a ways to go. I don't know...I'm kind of thinking out loud. Let me know what you think. I'm not sure if there is any precedent for breaking down an article like this into individual country articles. --MatthewUND^(talk) 00:50, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I think that would be a good idea, if others agree as well. With the amount of information we have already, I do think that "1997 Red River Flood in the United States" would reach GA status fairly quickly once we incorporated more information on Fargo, EGF, and any other areas that were afflicted. If there is no reasons against it, I'd say that we should do it. --Nehrams2020 00:54, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm glad you like my idea...I wasn't sure if I was thinking too far out of the box with that one. I think splitting the article would make it less confusing for readers. If you really like the idea, go ahead and split the article. --MatthewUND^(talk) 01:05, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I'll probably do it on Thursday or this weekend sometime, which will leave time for some people to raise any objections they have. Otherwise, I'll start splitting it into the two articles. --Nehrams2020 01:44, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I have split the article and removed information from this page so it isn't duplicated in the two daughter articles. I'll continue to work on 1997 Red River Flood in the United States and bring it to GAN hopefully within the week. --Nehrams2020 22:52, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Merge

I just placed the merge tempalte without being aware of teh above discussion; I suppose of this had been "in the United States" I might not have noticed; but I see no reason for them to be separate, other than the bulk of inforamtion. Flood-control efforts were bi-national and it's hard to talk about the one without talking also about the other; rather than breaking this on "national" lines I think the river is a single "organism" and this was one event, not two.....Skookum1 (talk) 16:16, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree that it is a single event, but for the amount of information present for the "in the U.S." article, I believe it is justified to have its own article. If you look at some major hurricanes, you can see separate articles for the impact of the storm on different states or regions (examples include: Effects of Hurricane Dennis in Mississippi, Effects of Hurricane Dennis in Georgia, Effects of Hurricane Noel in the United States, Effects of Hurricane Wilma in Florida, or Effects of Hurricane Wilma in The Bahamas) Due to the amount of information for "in Canada", it may possibly be merged back into the original article (and possibly split off again when there is significant expansion on it in the future). However, I think "in the U.S." should remain separate due to its current size/coverage and the reasons in the discussion above. --Nehrams2020 (talk) 17:30, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm in favour of the merge, as discussion of either needs to over-lap. Also un-mentioned in the devastation in Grand Forks as compared to Canadian towns/Winnipeg is the differing methods of Crest calculation. At the time, in ND, the average of the expected range was announced as the expected crest. In MB, the highest point of the range was used. This tended to result in better preperations, north of the US/Canada border —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.126.163.20 (talk) 20:17, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Merge. One event, two sides of the border. "Canada" is misleading in the other article since the Red River only exists in Manitoba, and no-one east of Thunder Bay even heard about it. --Wtshymanski (talk) 19:13, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the comment above that the U.S. article has enough detail to stand on its own and need not be merged with this article. --Wtshymanski (talk) 15:15, 28 March 2009 (UTC)