UPDATE: Our on-site reporter Katie Fehlinger is now sending videos from Fargo which you can see on our Breaking Weather News Page (PREMIUM | PRO). Here is the first one:

The residents of Fargo, North Dakota (and surrounding areas of the Dakotas and northern Minnesota) have some very unique flooding problems to deal with this week, due to both their geography and the time of year. Most of these issues are not normally associated with flooding in the East during the warm season, and a small part of the population could be facing Katrina-like delays in getting back into their homes. The photos below help illustrate this:

Here is a list that I've come up with the help of my fellow employees. They will be talking more about these unique problems in our Headlines (shown at right) and Midwest News Blog (PREMIUM | PRO). Consider how many of these items are not usually an issue with flooding:

1. It is so cold in North Dakota (12 degrees in Fargo this morning) that the rivers are frozen; they are actually blowing up ice with explosives to try to route the flood waters.

2. The flood waters are freezing in place, inside peoples homes, which will prevent people from recovering their valuables and cleaning up after the storm until the ice melts, which could be weeks.

3. It is so cold that people cannot walk through the flood waters without getting hypothermia, and the wind chill is even worse.

4. With the flood waters partially frozen, boats cannot rescue people. Instead, they are using air boats (as shown in the photo & video below). These boats (used in places like the Everglades) can move forward on water or glide over small areas of land (and apparently ice).

5. Large chunks of ice floating in fast-moving floodwaters will cause damage to buildings and vehicles when they crash into them, or weigh down on them. They could also rip open sandbags.

6. Thawing frozen ground could weaken levees or push water up underneath them.

7. Unlike in the East, where rivers flood over their banks into small areas then recede, the land is so flat there that the floods expand out for miles.

8. That geography also means that the flooding will recede extremely slowly (the graph below shows the Red River at Fargo will remain over RECORD stage for more than a week). This means that people will not be able to return to their homes and businesses for weeks (like New Orleans homeowners did during Hurricane Katrina).

9. Power outages because of the flooding will not only inconvenience people, but they will also be without heat. This could even happen in non-flooded areas as sections of the power grid are turned off section by section.

10. To make matters worse, a blizzard is headed for the area early next week. That will hamper rescue efforts and cause additional power outages.

Combine all this with the normal heath risks, fuel spills, and other problems that flooding causes, and your hearts really go out to these people.

Here's a graph of historical and forecast river heights for the Red River at Fargo as of today:

The data above indicates that the river height is breaking a record set 112 years ago. Indeed, a person in the video above says "No one has ever seen the river at this level in Fargo since the beginning of [recorded] history." The Wild Rice River (ND) 4 NW ABERCROMBIE shows similar stats though it has already crested - Max 27.77'; previous record 27.5' on March 3, 1897 (real-time graph | saved graph). 17 other NOAA gauges are experiencing "major flooding" in the area as of this writing.

Here are some more photos:

P.S.: I wanted to entitle this blog entry "Far-Out Friday Featured Fargo Flooding Fotos" but the situation is so serious there, I cannot find humor in it. Find out what the Red Cross is doing to help this situation, and donate today.

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