Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
Global News, July 8th – Climate change will force Manitoba to continue the flood fight in years to come, Emergency Measures Minister Steve Ashton said Tuesday.
Brandon Sun, July 8th – On June 19, 1881, he wrote, “the water started to rise suddenly. The Indians said it had never happened before and that the high water was usually in April.”
h/t Mike W.
As I recall my elementary school social studies, lo those many years ago, the reason the Red River Valley was so fertile is that IT FLOODS EVERY SPRING AND DEPOSITS FRESH SILT AND SOIL. That was the main reason that settlers SETTLED there…Those who ignore history are doomed….I guess you could just stop there and not finish the quote.
Back in the late ’40’s or very early ’50’s we kids here in Ontario were encouraged by our school teacher to get our parents to make a donation to the victims of the Red River flood.
It was huge news here in the East. Same sh!t, different year.
They manage to fix the Winnipeg floods. They close the flood gates and say “What flood?” Time to keep doing engineering and berming or raising farm houses so they can actually divert water without creating a new disaster.
always find it amusing that they put credence in first nations memories , most of them cant remember what happened last night.
The difference between 1881 and now is the amount of ditching that has taken place. Millions of sloughs and potholes and even small lakes are gone. All drained into the few remaining lakes that can’t be drained, or at least haven’t been drained yet. “Dig a ditch and get rid of it” is the tune most sing to. Lakes levels used to rise in wet cycles and drop in dry cycles. Now they rise in the dry cycles as well due to drainage ditches. There is no surge capacity left for when a wet cycle returns. Wetlands don’t cause flooding. Drainage causes flooding.
Summer floods are hard to predict? Hmm, let’s see….unusually long winter with heavy snowfalls right into the start of spring, an unusually cold spring slowing the melting….nope, couldn’t see delayed flooding happening under those conditions!
I miss the good old days (2005) when global warming was going to turn the prairies into a dust bowl…
The usual idiots assume that any greenhouse effect will lead to weather extremes. Recent observation plus those of hundreds of millions of years ago point to moderation of climate. Something wrong with moderation?
wait, in 2014 you choose to live in a river basin that’s has essentially zero elevation change for miles and miles, has a river that drains North, has historically flooded all the time, and you are mildly surprised by… Flooding?
There’s a term for people like that. Its rude.
I figured it out.
Until last week people in Winnipeg were keeping taps running so their pipes wouldn’t freeze up after that long and brutally cold winter.
So Winnipeg residents stopped diverting water into homes and the floods happened.
This is what occurs when ya build a city in a big lake bottom….Lake Agassiz in this case.
Jökulhlaup
From the net
A German born geologist, Jean de Charpentier (1786-1855), was captivated by erratic boulders and moraines (mounds of glacial debris), and formed the first theory of glaciation during the 1830s. In 1841, Test on the Glaciers, his theory was published It was the first detailed, scientific case for glaciation.
Louis Agassiz (1807-1873), who was also converted to the glacier explanation of geologic curiosities, forged ahead and integrated all these geologic facts to formulate a theory that a great Ice Age had once gripped the Earth (Étude sur les glaciers, 1840). In a later book, Système glaciare (1847), he presented further evidence gathered from all over Europe that supported his theory. In 1848, he accepted a position at Harvard and moved to America, where he discovered even more evidence of glaciation.
By 1870, the theory of ancient periods of extensive ice was generally accepted by the scientific community.
I seem to recall (1997 I believe) when a certain guy called Chretien tried to make political hay by tossing sandbags to hold back Manitoba flood waters during an election campaign.
Justin Trudeau did the same (more or less) last year in Calgary.
On another note, much of Holland lies below sea level. The “sea” in question is not a fairy mild lake,
but the North Sea, which is subject to aggressive weather to put it mildly (I remember one winter storm
which knocked down about 10,000 trees and removed many chimney pots from roofs; there was no breach
in the sea dykes, i.e. no catastrophic damage). From this, one concludes
that Manitobans, like most North Americans, are stupid and lazy. Or maybe just stupid.
Back in 1979, I recall that the radar technicians going out to fix the radar at the airport used a canoe to get on site. And if there was no previous flooding, why does Winnipeg have a floodway going around the city?
Just like there isn’t a month in the year when Calgary hasn’t a one time experienced snowfall, there isn’t a non-freezing month of the year when southern Manitoba hasn’t experience excessive wet or even flooding.
People in Ontario refer to Sask. as flat. To that I reply “take a trip to southern Manitoba. It is as flat a a table top. Flooding there is like spilling milk on a table top; it just goes everywhere.”
Just drove through Portage La Prairie yesterday, the water’s apparently not as high as 2011. My brother’s neighbour is making big bucks working scads of overtime building the dikes up.
My hometown has high water, but still lower than 2011. The locals aren’t about to panic yet, they’ve seen this a few times before.
If more politicians since Duff had built more floodways,the problem wouldn’t have been so bad.
I can’t speak for that area of Manitoba, nor the south-east of Saskatchewan, but the area north of Saskatoon, between the North and the South Saskatchewan has not had a water table this high for at least forty years. A couple of years of above average snowfall and above average summer rainfall could just be responsible. There are bulrushes and large sloughs everywhere. Forty year old poplar trees and pussy willow bushes around some sloughs have been drowned out.
Our yard has had 11″ of rain since 24 April until 9 July. This is about the total summer average for the forty years we have farmed here.
“MSM – an old indian word meaning lobotomy”
“Climate change” the catch phrase that helps everyone, except taxpayers I guess. Besides the scam artists selling climate change snake oil the politicians especially love the phenomena as it gives them an out for everything they haven’t done in the past plus an opportunity to spend more of our money on projects that they will get to put their name on. Why wouldn’t they love that?
Re the climate change is responsible article How do you build a sandbag?