Category Archives: Flood

Apple Creek flooding

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During one of my frequent photography outings around the outskirts of town, I came upon a little bit of flooding out in the Apple Creek area. This portion of Apple Creek Road at the intersection with 106th Street normally has water on both sides, but the water has overtaken the road for the time being.

For a pretty good stretch of this road, the water is not very deep; it’s simply over the surface of the road. I parked the truck well back from the barricades and hiked in for a little while to get some cool photos.

This shows the sign at the intersection with 106th as well as the point where the road emerges once again from the water. Those barricades you see in the distance are not the first ones blocking the road; it’d be a pretty bad experience to come over that hill from the west and only then find out that the road is closed (and under water!)

Hopefully we’ve all seen the last of spring flooding for now, and that things will get back to normal. We’re long overdue for some beautiful spring weather…just ask my kids, my cameras, and my motorcycles!

Debris happens

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If you got a chance to see this winter’s ice jams up close, then you know that there was far more than just ice in that sinister swirling mass. I saw “trees of unusual size” (let’s see who gets THAT reference) being tossed about, pulled under, and resurfacing again. It was a spooky testament to the forces involved in those powerful ice flows (no, not floes).

There seems to be a little bit of that left over. There’s debris along the banks of the Heart River that was deposited by the ice jam, and I noticed this mess plastered against one of the pilings of the Highway 6 bridge. Looks like there’s some cleanup to be done!

North Dakota high tide

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I got the opportunity to poke around the Apple Creek area the other day and scope out the ol’ stomping grounds. For instance, there’s a Great Blue Heron living near the 66th Street bridge that has eluded me for years, and he made a fool out of me again already this Spring (as if I need help for that). This time around, however, much of the area is under water, or at least it was several days ago.

I didn’t get any earth-shattering photos of this, but there were people lined up along the ditch beside 66th Street, fishing the high water in the ditch. Carp up to three feet long were everywhere! One of the ladies in our office came back to work after her lunch break, saying they were spearing carp “as big as me!” over at the golf course. Amazing.

My hope is that this will be a good year for the wetlands of the Prairie Pothole region. I suspect it’ll take more than spring flooding to accomplish that, however. We’ll have to wait and see!

Stranded and stoic

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These four statues sit stranded on an icy island south of Bismarck. There’s no telling what might be buried beneath the crust of the ice between them, at least not until we get one heck of a thaw. The stark blackness of these statues seemed fitting for today’s cold, overcast day. The one huddled on the right looks especially appropriate.

I suspect these stoic figures were waist-high in water and ice a short while ago, if not worse. Even now they stand in the middle of a sea of ice, making it really frustrating for photographers like me. I couldn’t get the angle I wanted no matter how hard I tried; unless I felt like slogging through the ice and water, I couldn’t find the ideal arrangement of statues and trees. It is what it is, I suppose. It was still a nice find.

Heart River flooding / ice jam

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Quite the crew of spotters I have…two of my friends and my mom called to let me know that the Heart River was jammed full of ice. I was already out and about running errands while my beautiful wife and dashingly handsome boys took their much-needed naps, so I headed out with my camera to join the dozens of gapers investigating the carnage.

I don’t remember seeing the Heart like this since I was a high school kid. There was one time back in the 80s where the ice chunks were much larger, much thicker. Quite frankly, I’m not sure we’ve had the precipitation for something like this during most recent winters.

I actually managed to get this shot without a constant stream of cars in the near lane! That was no small feat; it was a near traffic jam on the bridge for the entire time that I was in the area. I wondered if all Mandan residents got a notice to report to the bridge! By the way, this bridge has a name. Do you know it?

The churning wall of ice and debris clearly had enormous force behind it, and was mere feet from the bottom of the bridge. The log in the foreground was absolutely enormous, but was being tossed about like a rag doll in the ice. It was spun around a couple of times as the ice worked its way past the concrete bridge support, but never lost speed in its trek down the river channel. It’s spooky to consider those forces working on someone unfortunate enough to fall into this mess. They’d be crushed in seconds.

Just south of the bridge, bordered by Highway 1806, this field is now under several feet of water. The bridge in the background is rarely above water; the area below it is for overflow in cases such as this. I used to climb around, hang from, and do other crazy stuff on this bridge as a kid. Most of the time there was only sand below it. Now there’s plenty of ice cold water.

This bridge is next to the Fort Lincoln Trolley station on south 3rd. There were plenty of people as foolhardy as me walking across this bridge. It was very disconcerting to look down between the railroad ties and see the massive wall of ice and debris mere feet below, especially after observing the tremendous force packed between those icy chunks!

One of my favorite angles, although I took many. This is a fun little bridge, even when there isn’t chunky, churning danger below. I’ve got a soft spot for old bridges, though, as the whole Memorial Bridge affair has demonstrated.

Wide angle, anyone? I love my 10-22mm wide angle lens for things like this. It helps give a little bit of perspective to the amazing flow of ice.

Hay Creek seems to be throttling up pretty well too. I found Divide Avenue blocked this evening as well, and it has a high-speed river charging across it. Once the waters subside, I wonder how much damage the road will have sustained.

Just to make things interesting, we’re about to get some freezing temperatures with rain turning to snow Monday. The weather in North Dakota is living up to its reputation this spring!