Flooding Underway

We have seen a lot of rain and snow over the past couple of days so flooding now is a big concern and it is already occurring in many areas. Here is a map of the rainfall that we saw on the first round of storms Sunday night.

This map really doesn't do some areas justice because I talked to some folks in the Lake Preston area and their rain gauges had anywhere from 3-5 inches of rain. So there were definitely some local areas that got more then this shows.

Now the big problem with this rain is that much of it is falling on frozen or partially frozen ground. Water doesn't penetrate frozen soil so it just runs off into tributaries, A.K.A. rivers, lakes, and streams. The map below shows the 8" solid temperatures for South Dakota. Notice how many of them across the north are still frozen.Finally, here is a map of the current stages of several rivers across South Dakota. The colors of each dot represent different stages of flooding; Yellow=Near flood stage, Orange=Minor flooding, Red=Moderate flooding, Magenta=Major Flooding. This hopefully gives you an idea of the extent of some of the flooding and how the recent precipitation is just going to add to the problem.

~KDLT Meteorologist Cody Matz