• River Update 3/7/20

  • River update. Have been in contact with the NWS this morning. The rain that is forecast for Monday has not yet been imputed into the future line yet for Latham. That will happen on Sunday night. The Sheriff has ComED scheduled to make another adjustment at the dam today. We currently have 3.1 million gallons of water flowing past here per minute. The river levels are much better than a year ago at this time. The function of the weather service is to give us advanced warning of river rises for all area rivers based on snow melt and future rain forecast ed. The reality is there is no way to not have all rivers rise when this happens. The problem with the entire Midwest is the ground saturation we have had. When it rains there is just a wet sponge and nowhere for the water to soak into. I just don’t understand how area residents think the water that is flowing downstream is magically going to bypass Winnebago county on the way to the Mississippi. It is not possible no matter what people think about our dam. The function of the NWS is to give us a heads up a day or two ahead of time for the fox and rock river basins.Mother nature can not be told what to do. The gauges all have the kcfs line on the right side of them. This tells us how much water flow is in the basin at the present time flowing past our homes. There is no way to change the volume of the faucet that is affecting the basin except for the ground water table to dry out. Sump pumps are running nonstop 10 miles away from the river due to ground water tables being elevated. River levels over the winter were lower due to many creaks being frozen and the kcfs flow rate being lower. The frost is leaving and the creeks are now starting to drain the frozen ground. A warm dry and windy weather pattern is the only solution for the Midwest flooding problems. Beloit dam has all their splash boards still in place. All their manual gates are closed and the 2 big gates are only partially open. As with last year our increase water levels are coming from the pec and sugar rivers that are draining from the flooded farm fields. There are no gated dams on the pec river.