When the Red River floods, how does that affect the Empire Builder?

[Cascadia]

This article from NOAA says there's a good chance of major flooding this spring on the Red River:

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2009/2...5_redriver.html

I know it's not unusual for the Red River to flood and that it has happened pretty severely within the last 10 -20 years.

In the past has this been terribly disruptive for the Empire Builder Route? Just curious, wondering if anyone here ever had any problems getting through the Red River area (Ispolkem?).

 

[saxman]

IIRC, the only time that the Empire Builder has been affected by the floods was in 1997 during the massive Grand Forks flood. But even then the train detoured on the BNSF route from Fargo to Minot. When the river got pretty high in 2006, it didn't really effect the tracks though that I know of. Along I-29 there was lots of water and you were pretty much driving over a lake, but it never affected train service. The tracks the Builder use are parallel to I-29 from Grand Forks to Fargo. So unless there are massive floods, I wouldn't worry too much about it. Grand Forks has really built up their dike system, and so has Fargo. Yet Fargo sits a little higher I think.

 

[Ispolkom]

This article from NOAA says there's a good chance of major flooding this spring on the Red River:
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2009/2...5_redriver.html

I know it's not unusual for the Red River to flood and that it has happened pretty severely within the last 10 -20 years.

In the past has this been terribly disruptive for the Empire Builder Route? Just curious, wondering if anyone here ever had any problems getting through the Red River area (Ispolkem?).

In some past years, I know that the Empire Builder has taken a different route during floods. Instead of going north from Fargo, then west from Grand Forks, the EB travels directly northwest to Minot (I remember this line called the Surrey Cutoff). This avoids most of the run through the Red River Valley, and also misses the part that skirts the north side of Devils Lake, which also is somewhat vulnerable to flooding.

I think that the BNSF line through Moorhead and Fargo is raised on an causeway, but I'm always asleep at that point.

So, I'd expect delays but probably not cancellation.

 

[Cascadia]

Everything you guys say makes so much sense. And I could see the tracks being built kind of elevated through that area too.

Does Fargo have any huge flood management projects like the one I know about in Winnipeg? I forget what that's called but it's like a huge basin they dug to catch the river overflow. You say they upgraded the dikes, was that since the last big floods then?

I don't know what has gotten into me that I want to visit Fargo. I kind of want to get to know it and see if I might want to live there someday if things ever didn't work out here. I know won't go back to Minneapolis but Fargo is sort of close to my family, compared to here it certainly is. Don't know if I could hack the climate extremes after being so spoiled out here in the Pacific Northwest.

 

[Ispolkom]

Everything you guys say makes so much sense. And I could see the tracks being built kind of elevated through that area too.
Does Fargo have any huge flood management projects like the one I know about in Winnipeg? I forget what that's called but it's like a huge basin they dug to catch the river overflow. You say they upgraded the dikes, was that since the last big floods then?

I don't know what has gotten into me that I want to visit Fargo. I kind of want to get to know it and see if I might want to live there someday if things ever didn't work out here. I know won't go back to Minneapolis but Fargo is sort of close to my family, compared to here it certainly is. Don't know if I could hack the climate extremes after being so spoiled out here in the Pacific Northwest.

It depends on what you mean by huge. My mother in Minot rants about how Fargo wants the rest of the state to pay for its flood protection, but I'm not sure that isn't just the reflexive hatred that much of the rest of the state has for the metropolis. (Cass County, which contains Fargo, has more population than half of the other counties in the state combined.) This site seems to cover the question in some detail. The problem is that the Red River Valley, a glacial lake bed, is so flat. Combine that with the northern flow of the Red River and flooding is hard to avoid.

 

[Cascadia]

Hi Ispolkom, thanks for the North Dakota insider's point of view.

About that northward flowing Red River, the first time I was by it in Manitoba, I was up in Selkirk NE of Winnipeg, and it was just so wrong to see a river flowing north! It was very disorienting, it almost made me dizzy.

I grew up in the Mississippi watershed, about 1/8 of a mile from the source of Minnehaha Creek which flows into the Mississippi. My brain is hard wired that rivers flow into the Gulf of Mexico, dammit! Someone forgot to tell the Red River

Once you get used to it it's cool to think about a river flowing all that way to Hudson Bay from our back yard.

And it's bed, goes through the former Lake Agassiz, right? I always thought that concept of that big shallow lake was fascinating.

 

[Ispolkom]

Hi Ispolkom, thanks for the North Dakota insider's point of view.
About that northward flowing Red River, the first time I was by it in Manitoba, I was up in Selkirk NE of Winnipeg, and it was just so wrong to see a river flowing north! It was very disorienting, it almost made me dizzy.

I grew up in the Mississippi watershed, about 1/8 of a mile from the source of Minnehaha Creek which flows into the Mississippi. My brain is hard wired that rivers flow into the Gulf of Mexico, dammit! Someone forgot to tell the Red River

Once you get used to it it's cool to think about a river flowing all that way to Hudson Bay from our back yard.

And it's bed, goes through the former Lake Agassiz, right? I always thought that concept of that big shallow lake was fascinating.

Most of the rivers in Siberia drain into the Arctic Ocean, and so they have even worse problems with ice dams and spring flooding. I never understood why others found that so odd, but it's all what you're used to.

Now I commute along the Mississippi into downtown St. Paul, and between the occasional sightings of bald eagles and the eastbound Empire Builder, I'm generally happy with things. When we lived on the East side, there were better train-spotting opportunities, but life is a set of compromises.

Now if only the Winnipeger still ran from the Twin Cities north to Winnipeg.

 

[Cascadia]

Most of the rivers in Siberia drain into the Arctic Ocean, and so they have even worse problems with ice dams and spring flooding. I never understood why others found that so odd, but it's all what you're used to.
Now I commute along the Mississippi into downtown St. Paul, and between the occasional sightings of bald eagles and the eastbound Empire Builder, I'm generally happy with things. When we lived on the East side, there were better train-spotting opportunities, but life is a set of compromises.

Now if only the Winnipeger still ran from the Twin Cities north to Winnipeg.

Now I see what you meant about north flowing rivers being prone to flooding - because they are flowing from the thawed area into the frozen area, that makes sense, never thought of it!

Boy if there had been a train running to Winnipeg I would have been on that thing all the time. I had friends there and we used to go back and forth a fair amount. I missed Winnipeg some when I moved out here to the West Coast 7.5 years ago. That is mighty far away now. That's another appealing thing about Fargo, while not close to Winnipeg, it is closer than Minneapolis is. However I have it better here, being in Bellingham, I can hop on the train to Vancouver BC and I do, about twice a month. So I get to go to Canada a lot more than I ever did when I was living in Mpls.

That's cool you drive along the Mississippi there. It's beautiful and you get to see all the seasons. We took the Empire Builder to Chicago for a trade show in 96 I think. It was so cheap and you could still smoke then, we sat in the lounge car, it was kind of an upper level dome, and smoked. That was fun. Those were the days. I don't smoke any more and I'm sure most people don't miss those old days but, it was fun.