Certain waterlogged years fill up the memory banks when you live in southern Minnesota long enough.
For Charles Goettlicher of North Mankato, timestamps etched in his early memory include 1957, 1965 and 1969. There was 1951, too, but he was too young to remember being evacuated from his family’s McKinley Avenue home at age 2.
The flood event led to his family’s move to Judson Bottom Road.
“My dad bought the farm outside of town,” he said. “It was a higher level than what the river could ever get to. That was probably the reason he looked at that land more than anything else.”
Downstream on the Minnesota River, Mayor Keith Swenson, 74, of Henderson, remembers 1965 and 1969 just as well. During the former flood, a neighbor down the street had to keep moving a Ford Model A every day to keep it above water.
Chased by the rising river, the car got closer and closer to the 15-year-old Swenson’s house.
“We were the next house to evacuate if the river would’ve risen higher,” he said.
This month’s flooding in Mankato and the surrounding region, brought on by relentless rainfall, could put 2024 at or above these years in the annals of southern Minnesota history.
The year in context
Rapidan Dam’s circumvention, earthen levee construction in North Mankato, highway closures, mass sandbagging and submerged neighborhoods in area cities all served as examples of this month’s extremity. Weather and river data backs up what residents were seeing in recent days.
Observation sites in Mankato reported between about 12-14 inches of rainfall through June 28, according to figures from the National Weather Service, or NWS. On the high end of the range south of town, an observer measured 14.7 inches.
Piecing together data for Mankato dating back to 1905, the year 2014 had the previous record high measure for rainfall at 13.2 inches. The Mankato area’s average rainfall for June is closer to 4.25 inches, stated Tyler Hasenstein, NWS meteorologist.
“The overall bottom line is that this year is significantly above what is typically expected during the month of June on the order of near triple the typical June rainfall,” he said. “What is especially unique besides the sheer amount is how widespread the higher amounts are, with much better consistency in area amounts which is typically harder to get during summer due to the nature of thunderstorms.”
Thunderstorms usually produce a spottier precipitation footprint, he added. This month they’ve caused more blanketed coverage.
Broad generalizations about how flooding events compare to each other within a region are difficult. As James Douglas Fallon put it, floods are usually localized events.
“It might be worse for one person and then someone three miles west of there it isn’t bad at all,” said Fallon, supervisory hydrologist at the Upper Midwest Science Center.
Fallon and colleagues at the center, part of the U.S. Geological Survey, or USGS, monitor river levels and flow in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. In general, he said river levels are certainly up in the Minnesota River Basin, and it could’ve been even worse if the river’s headwaters got hit harder by rainfall.
Still, he’s been seeing record readings in different measures along the river over the last week. The USGS measures both water levels and discharge levels at points along the Minnesota River, with figures from the last week being provisional.
The Watonwan River, feeding into the Blue Earth River south of the strained Rapidan Dam, reached a provisional peak water level of 19.3 feet last week, compared to the previous high of 18.89 feet in 1969, Fallon said.
For discharge, the Minnesota River in Mankato reached the 98,500 cubic feet per second mark last week. Fallon found the old record peak for discharge came in at 94,100 cubic feet per second in 1965.
The Minnesota River at Jordan was also on the cusp of beating its previous peak for water level and discharge Thursday. USGS teams were out in the area collecting the latest data, which is then sent to NWS and contributes to forecasts on river crests. Residents and officials were closely monitoring these projections to anticipate how high the river would run through Mankato.
Cameras installed by the USGS at points along rivers give the public another outlook on water levels and discharge. Cubic feet per second is an understandable measurement to a hydrologist, but the cameras take into account how important senses are to the layperson’s understanding of what’s happening on rivers.
Before 2024, longtime southern Minnesota residents pointed to 2010 and 2014 as the standout, flood-filled years from recent memory. Waterville’s city administrator, Teresa Hill, brought up 2014 as her community continued to collect and distribute sandbags last week.
Reflecting the traditionally localized nature of rainfall and flooding, 2016 might stand out more to St. Clair residents and 2019’s ice dams could quickly leap to mind in Garden City.
The perception shared by some residents, including both Goettlicher and Swenson, is that flooding frequency is increasing.
Going off of 130 years of records, Fallon said, more of the highest annual peaks on rivers in southern Minnesota have been recorded since the 1950s than before. A stat he shared from another river point in Minnesota during an interview on Minnesota Public Radio detailed how 10 of the 13 highest peaks for water levels on the Mississippi River in St. Paul occurred in the second half of the 130-year record.
Researchers suspect climate change and drainage practices, including more impervious surfaces, are among the factors influencing flooding trends. Each individual flood event, meanwhile, can be influenced by a whole host of factors including debris in a river or dam, rainfall and snow melt.
‘We’re resilient’
Goettlicher’s first memory of flooding sunk in back in 1957 when he looked down and saw a saturated field below his house. The same field is flooded now, although it now features more willow and cottonwood trees than it did back then.
In 1965 he remembers hopping on the bus to junior high in North Mankato and arriving to a ghost town. Word hadn’t reached the bus before the pick-up, but most of the city was preoccupied with staving off the river.
He joined the efforts in the coming days.
“A day or two later they started working on a big sandbag dike on Webster Avenue,” he said. “My dad took me there to fill sandbags. It was quite a crowd.”
He also has a vivid memory from 1969, which nearly reached 1965’s magnitude.
“I remember looking out at the Rapidan Dam in 1969 and the whole dam was shaking from the forces of water,” he said.
Like so many around the state and nation, the retired instructor at South Central College was following along with the live feeds from the dam last week. A huge difference between the floods of years past and now is how closely people can follow what’s happening in the wider region.
The road east and west from Goettlicher’s home is closed due to flooding. He said he’s able to get to town through a back way, and there are signs of the water levels starting to recede.
“We’ve had enough fun,” he said of June.
As with Mankato-North Mankato, Henderson has certainly been impacted by flooding but not as much as it would’ve been without mitigation infrastructure in place. A levee is to Henderson what flood walls are to Mankato.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been out inspecting the 35-year-old levee amid record river levels, Swenson said. It held up, but every flood has its own personality and can change a river’s path in unforeseen ways.
“We need to evaluate the system,” he said. “Make sure it’s ready for the next flood event.”
Swenson has been mayor of Henderson for three different stints covering 26 of the last 42 years. Since the levee came in, the main impact on the city isn’t homes under water as much as it is the flooded roadways leading in and out of the community.
Highway 19 east of the city, which crosses the Minnesota River, was under 8 feet of water as of Thursday. People living outside of Henderson along the closed roads are in difficult positions.
Yet Henderson itself as ever is pushing through on its current “peninsula,” Swenson said. It held its weekly car roll-in Tuesday and had its Sauerkraut Days prepped this weekend.
All the frequent flooding around it doesn’t stop Henderson from drawing people in, whether to visit or to plant more permanent roots.
“We’re resilient; we’re river rats,” Swenson said. “There’s a reason we’re here and it’s not because of convenience. It’s because we love the historical aspect of it and the beauty of the valley. It’s a unique little place.”
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