Wind and Water on the North Dakota Prairies

Flyfishing for northern pike is fun - and tasty.

Wind and water.

That sums up some our travel of the last couple weeks.

Last week I wrote about impending flooding on southwestern Montana streams. The cold weather around Memorial Day pretty much put the local flooding on hold, though flooding in other parts of Montana, particularly in Hardin and Roundup, made national news.

We took a road trip out of Montana, though that didn’t get us out of flooding areas. In fact, it put us right in the middle of flooding. We went to Minot, North Dakota for Memorial Day weekend to take in the festivities of a granddaughter’s graduation from high school. While we were there, it also seemed like a good idea to do some fishing on area lakes with our son, Kevin.

There are a lot of lakes in north central North Dakota, though there is always the question of whether the wind will let you put a boat on the water. Our first day of fishing was breezy, though there wasn’t any problem with boating, at least not on the smaller lake we fished. In an afternoon of fishing we caught a number of pike and invited a couple of them home for a fish dinner.

The next day was one of those windy prairie days. It didn’t keep us from fishing, though we elected to leave the boat at home. We’ve fished this lake a number of times over the years and there’s a concrete pier at the public access point on the lake where we’ve tied up Kevin’s boat in the past. With a couple winters of heavy snows, the lake level is up and the pier is under a foot of water. This actually made for a good fishing spot, as there was deep water easily accessible for casting streamers for pike.

Flyfishing for northern pike still seems like kind of a novelty in Midwestern states, even if it’s a trendy thing to do among a lot of fly anglers. In any event, flyfishing seemed the most effective way to catch pike on this trip, with a purple Wooly Bugger, which resembles a leech in the water, the hot fly.

While we spent several days fishing, the weather continued to be a hot topic. This past winter was a hard one, with heavy snows all across central North Dakota and on into Canada. Back in 1969, Minot had a major flood that dominated the national news. Since then, Minot built a system of dikes along the Souris River, which flows through the city, and flooding in the city seemed to become a thing of the past.

This spring there has been a long flooding season in rural areas both above and downstream from the city. Driving out of town, looking at flooded areas downstream from the city, Kevin remarked, “It’s been like this for a couple months already, and there’s no end in sight.” That week, City crews feverishly hauled dirt to build up the level of the dikes in town.

Over that weekend rain dominated the weather. Heavy rain fell the night before Memorial Day, though it stopped by midday. Kevin and I took another fishing trip, fishing through what the Irish might call a “soft rain.” We hit the road to go back to Minot when Kevin’s wife phoned, concerned about our being caught in the storm. “What storm?” he asked. A thunderstorm had rolled through Minot that afternoon, with heavy rain.

Coming back into town, we could see rivers of water pouring down road ditches and hilly draws. That evening another rainstorm pounded the area and the next day large areas of the city were evacuated in fears that the dikes would fail, following reports of 4 inches of rain in areas northwest of Minot.

Other areas of North Dakota were bracing for a deluge of water coming from Montana’s Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers, and the night before we visited friends in Fargo, they had winds estimated at almost 100 mph.

Yes, this is the season for wind and water and Montana and the Dakotas are at the center of it all.

Spring flooding, and a look back at some historic Montana floods

Mother Nature is, as usual, calling the shots this spring.

In the Mississippi River basin, Ol’ Man River is at its highest levels since the record floods of 1927. On the other hand, Texas and Oklahoma are in a severe drought and they’d like to have some of that water. Joplin, Missouri is cleaning-up following a devastating tornado last week, a storm that killed 116 people (at last count) and injured hundreds more.

Here in Montana people in river valleys are looking nervously at rising waters and wondering how high waters will rise. We have prime conditions for severe flooding this year, with a well above average snowpack and a cold spring that has kept that snowpack in place.

Last week there was flooding in eastern Montana, closing I-90 at Hardin, due to heavy rains that sent creeks over their banks., converging near the Little Bighorn Battlefield.

In western Montana, the big question is whether we’ll have either a heat wave or heavy rains to send all that snowpack down the mountains in one big surge of water.

Let’s take a look back at some historic Montana floods.

On June 19, 1938, a flash flood on Custer Creek near Terry, Montana, washed out a railroad bridge across the creek. When the Northern Pacific Olympic Special came through in the middle of the night, it crashed into the waters. 46 people were killed and many more were injured.

In 1997, Livingston experienced what was considered a 100-year flood in a scenario similar to this year. The mountains in the area had a snowpack of 200 percent of normal. In mid-May there was a heat wave with temps in the 80s, and that was followed by heavy rain.

Northwest Montana, on both sides of the Continental Divide, experienced what is considered Montana’s flood of the 20th Century in June 1964. Rainstorms on June 8 - 10 dumped as much as 14 inches of rain along the Divide in a 36 hour period, and streams that were already running high with snowmelt surged with water. Gibson Dam, on the upper Sun River, overflowed and floodwaters took out homes, roads and bridges all the way to Great Falls.

Farther north along the Divide, flooding on the Teton and Marias river systems destroyed an irrigation dam near Dupuyer, and caused massive damage on Blackfeet reservation communities of Heart Butte and Browning. In Glacier National Park, roads washed out, isolating Many Glacier hotel from Babb.

West of the Divide, the Middle Fork of the Flathead River went wild. The Flathead River at Columbia Falls crested at over 12 feet above flood stage. Areas up to a mile from the river were under four feet of water. Some 20,000 acres and several hundred homes along the Flathead River were flooded.

In a 2007 article in the Daily InterLake of Kalispell, reporter Heidi Gaiser noted one area that was hard hit in 1964, the community of Evergreen, along U.S. 2 northeast of Kalispell. Evergreen now has extensive commercial development in areas that went under water in 1964. As for possibilities of future flooding, Flathead County planner Tracy Sears-Tull said in that report, “It’s not a matter of if, but when it will happen.”

In all, the 1964 floods caused 30 deaths and inundated 20 percent of Montana’s surface area, which is a lot of real estate.

Flooding is, of course, a natural event. Floods cause problems when we humans encroach onto flood plains and build structures. Catastrophic flooding happens when dams fail, with the failure of the Teton River Dam in southeastern Idaho in 1976 as a classic example of dam failure, with consequent loss of life and property.

There are benefits to flooding, in that the waters enrich the soil over the floodplain, adding nutrients and organic matter, plus recharging aquifers. We can look at ancient Egypt where an entire civilization grew up and flourished, totally dependent on the benefits of the annual flooding of the Nile River.

Just the same, I’ll be looking forward to a month from now when waters recede and trout are taking dry flies.

Thoughts on Memorial Day

Memorial Day weekend is coming up; the weekend most people across the country generally regard as the first holiday of the summer season. Here in southwest Montana, we’ve learned that, often as not, it’s the last holiday of the winter season.

So, if you’re planning on an outing this weekend, my advice is make sure to pack cold weather clothing, rain jackets, cocoa mix and makings for a big pot of chile, because the biggest challenge for the weekend will be keeping warm and dry.

Let’s hope I’m wrong.

And let’s not forget that a weekend of camping and fishing is not what Memorial Day is all about. Decoration Day, the forerunner of Memorial Day, was, in 1868, set aside to place flowers on graves of both Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery. In 1873, New York was the first state to recognize the holiday and by 1890 it was recognized by all of the northern states. Southern states refused to acknowledge the day until after World War I, when the holiday changed from honoring Civil War dead to honoring Americans who died fighting in any war.

Traditionally, Memorial Day was observed on May 30. In 1971, the last Monday in May became the date for the observance.

A couple weeks ago we attended the funeral for a member of our church, a World War II veteran who survived 165 consecutive days of combat in the Philippines and lived to the age of 87, long enough to become a great-grandfather, something he likely didn’t even dare to dream about during those long-ago days when he was under fire.

During the service my mind wandered to those last survivors of the First World War. Frank Buckles, the last surviving American veteran of the Great War died this past February.

Just this month, Claude Choules, the last surviving combat veteran of the Great War died at age 110 on May 5. Mr. Choules was a seaman in the Royal Navy and witnessed the scuttling of the German fleet in Scapa Flow in Scotland. He stayed in the Royal Navy after the war and after a training assignment in Australia he transferred to the Royal Australian Navy and continued to serve until age 55.

In his 80s, Mr. Choules took a creative writing course with the plan to write family memoirs. He established some sort of record by publishing his autobiography at age 108. Despite a long record of naval service, in his later years he declared himself to be a pacifist and refused to participate in any events glorifying war.

While Claude Choules was the last surviving combat veteran, another Briton, Florence Green, also age 110, is the last service member of that war. Ms. Green was a waitress in the Women’s Royal Air Corps.

April marked the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War, and I have to confess it made me feel old. I remember, during my high school years, the death of the last Civil War veteran, Albert Woolson, a drummer boy in that bloody conflict. I was a senior in college when the nation observed the centennial of the beginning of the war and the college orchestra did a concert of music from that era.

In the late 1960s, I had the opportunity to interview a centenarian who was a veteran of the Spanish-American War. He was a feisty old man who recalled military training camp, “We marched around a lot, but never went to Cuba; the war ended and they sent us home.” He was incensed because his auto insurance was canceled when he reached 100. “I’ve got a brand new Cadillac sitting in my garage and can’t use it,” he complained.

Now, we’re saying farewells to the heroes of my childhood, the veterans of World War II. Of the over 16 million Americans who answered the call, there are less than two million still living, survivors in their late 80s or early 90s.

While Memorial Day is set aside to honor the fallen, we honor those living veterans while we still can.