As a native Nebraskan and inhabitant of Northeast Nebraska, where the “Flood of ‘19” and the “bomb cyclone” devastated many communities throughout the Midwest, I feel compelled to say something.
Sitting in my office in Wisner, NE on Wednesday morning, March 13, 2019, I was reflecting on the “funny weather” we’ve been having.
Last year, the growing season didn’t end so well. Heavy precipitation in the fall and winter kept us out of the field, and I wasn’t able to get to half of the fields I’ve intended to soil sample. Harvest was so late, we had a client even driving the combine in a foot of snow just to get the corn out of the field before too much of 2019 had passed. Nebraska didn’t just get snow—we got funny mixed precipitation where it would change around from rain to sleet to snow and everything in between. My mom and dad had to drive through big globs of snow (no, not little cute snowflakes) that turned to watery ice as soon as it hit anything. So the soil was saturated AND covered in piles of snow. The saturated soil froze before we were able to get to the fields. We bent one of our soil tubes trying to get those samples! Even the dead plant material (what we call stover) was frozen to the topsoil.
This winter has been so cold, even the US Post Office where I live didn’t send out their employees that deliver by foot for a couple of days. Schools called off days for “cold weather”. My kids’ school used more than their allotted “snow days”. Combine the huge amounts of snow and the continued cold long past when we all thought it should be (a HIGH of +2 degrees on March 3???? Are you kidding???), a little warm weather combined with an interesting storm dropping a couple of inches of water created a very bad situation.
I won’t get into the science behind why all of this happened (I’m not a climatologist after all!!). It was a combination of frozen saturated soil not accepting infiltration of surface water, melting towers of snow, ice jams and ice breaking free, and precipitation that demolished much of Nebraska. Ken Dewey, a climatologist at UNL, described it as the “perfect storm”, and I was reminded of the movie with that name.
“Perfect storm” isn’t a nice thing. Western Nebraska was getting blizzards, and eastern Nebraska was flooding.
So getting back to my pondering on Wednesday morning. I had just driven my 30 minute commute to the office through dense fog and rain. A phone call to my husband (who was stuck at home because you can’t put up a building during a rainfall on an already muddy work site), and I discovered that we had water pouring into our basement. Out comes the vacuum! Thank goodness we had one available. I decided on a hunch to head home early. It might be good to give the hubby a break and some help with the little unwanted creek in our house, right? On the way home, I had to drive through water already passing over the highway (not a huge deluge yet, and the roads guys were there and okayed it…please remember to “Turn around, Don’t Drown”). Not long after, the highway closed.
The next morning, ice and flurries kept me from heading to the office. That, and the fact that I had to call my home insurance adjuster. My sister called me (she lives just 5 blocks from me) saying, “How are you and where are you going?” Huh???!?!?! Turns out Norfolk was evacuating some of the city (including us) because the levee might break. My boss was evacuated from his house in Beemer. My kids, who live in Columbus, were stranded in their house. No one could get into or out of the city. Shell Creek was ½ mile wide, and the Loup and Platte Rivers were spreading so far, they merged.
Yup. We took the Chevy to the levee and the levee was NOT dry.
I am lucky. Norfolk residents and businesses came together well—we had an emergency team set up, refuges to stay at, food available, and a texting system that kept us all up to date. The levee held, we got back to a house that was still standing and didn’t have any more water damage than what happened Wednesday, and my family is safe.
All of us here in Nebraska either had damage first hand or know someone who did. There are organizations helping connect people, social media got the word out to the rest of the nation, and we WILL recover. For all of you who lost something in the “Flood of ‘19”, I am thinking of you. In the time you take to reassess your situation, clean up the mess, move animals, look at your fields, don’t forget that YOU are important too. Take care of yourself. Reach out.
We as Nebraskans are here. And we will stay. We are resilient.
Photos courtesy of Doug Throener (Beemer, NE) and Ken Taber (Wisner, NE).