Flooding in southern Manitoba

This morning I joined Gary Doer and Stuart Murray on a visit to have a look at the flood situation in Morris. As you can see from the photo above, the main bridge into Morris coming from the north on highway 75 now has water on the bridge and the bridge is closed to traffic.

The consensus from our visit was that so far we have been relatively fortunate in Manitoba, thanks in part to dykes upgraded or constructed after the flood of 1997. However, all will depend on having good weather for the next two weeks. If we were to have a lot of rain the situation could change dramatically.

It is also apparent that we need to improve our ability to predict the extent of flooding. Early last week, the prediction was a minor flood event. A day later, a major flood was being predicted with much higher water levels similar to what happened in 1996. If there had been a heavy rain such a change might have been understandable. As it was, the change signalled a clear need to do better earlier on in predicting the size of the flood.