Historic Great Lakes flooding shoves ice chunks into Michigan homes
Several dams neared failure in Michigan and Wisconsin this week as rivers and creeks spilled out of their banks into homes and submerged cars underwater.
Flooding surged into Washington Elementary School in Janesville, Wisconsin, on April 17. Local officials hope to place the roughly 400 students into other schools while Washington Elementary recovers.
Flooding sent giant chunks of ice into Michigan homes this week after record snowfall melt and rounds of heavy rain created dangerous flooding around the Great Lakes.
The statewide flooding dashboard from the Michigan Police showed 40 counties under a state of emergency (red) and road closures due to flooding at dozens of locations (purple and yellow dots).
Insult was added to injury on Black Lake, Michigan, Sunday, as huge blocks of ice, buoyed by floodwaters, smashed into homes. While not technically an "ice shove," which happens every winter when wind drives chunks of ice onto shore, this combination proved even worse.
New river height records were set last Thursday at the Manistee River near Sherman, and the Muskegon River at Newaygo, Evart and Bridgeton, all in Michigan.
State officials are asking residents to report damage online after the state was overwhelmed with flooding over the last few weeks.
In neighboring Wisconsin, flood warnings and evacuations were issued early last week. The Wolf River at New London, Wisconsin, also set a new height record Friday morning.
Rising floodwaters inundated a Janesville, Wisconsin, elementary school, forcing the school to close.
Several dams came close to failure
Operations at dams upstream from the Cheboygan Dam in Michigan were finally pulled back as the situation stabilized Tuesday. The dam came within 5.5 inches of overtopping.
"The monumental and successful efforts by Department of Natural Resources staff and cooperators will continue," Richard Hill, co-leader of the DNR Incident Management Team said in a press release.
This is why you should not drive across flooded roadways! This car in Fremont, Michigan attempted to do so on April 16, and ended up in the gulch. (Jerry's Towing and Recovery / Robert Sturgeon Jr.)
It was not the only dam threatened by the flooding this month. Homestead Dam in Benzie County nearly failed, causing reinforcement efforts. Evacuations were issued for the Croton Dam last Thursday morning. Bucks Pond, a small private dam, failed on April 13.
“It was not built to do this,” Deputy Antrim County Administrator Janet Koch said, as the Bellaire dam in Antrim county struggled with high flow from the Intermediate River last week.
No casualties have been reported from the floods so far.
Most river gauges were falling by Tuesday morning, but several were still above major flood stage in Wisconsin and Illinois, NOAA data indicated. AccuWeather meteorologists say that there will be a bit of rain Thursday night into Friday for the flooded areas, but more rain may come next week.
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