The Royce Files

 The Red River had crested in Fargo at somewhere around 39 feet a week and half ago. The levees and dikes held back the angry waters of the Red for yet another year. However, there was at least one causality. A man sandbagging his home died of a heart attack. It wasn't in town. Someplace north of town. Oakport to be exact. That same weekend my room-mate and I were driving north out of town on I-29. We were heading to Grand Forks. However we were slightly impeded when the road just north of town became a flood-way. Nearly 6 inches of water covered I-29 north of Fargo to a little bit past Argusville. It was a scary drive. We could not see pavement for miles and miles. Plus it was raining and it appeared a current was pushing the water over the road. It took almost an hour to traverse 6 miles of flooded interstate. It was scary. I didn't have any ID with me nor my camera. I just prayed. We made it to Grand Forks. The road eventually closed a few hours after. The above picture wa...

Another flood continues to descend upon the region. A bit later than previous but that gave us more time. Sandbag dikes are going up this week. I think the crest of around 40' is forecasted for April 10th. The photo at the right is from almost a month ago. The snow was nearly gone but then-wham! Another snow storm and then another and another. Not sure how much snow we got this winter. Someone told me something close to 7'. In the long term, flood mitigation plans seem to be gaining opponents. The current plan on the table- the diversion with water retention- has critics north, south and west coming together to stop this idea. Changes have been made to address "downstream" communities but apparently it is not enough. The whole process appears to be heading into a Garrison Diversion -like conflict in which there is a possibility that not one drop of the Red River will be stopped from overwhelming the Valley during a flood. We are a hardy people and would accept it ...

It seems like the flood has taken backseat to Japan and Libya probably because it is a "slow flood flood a coming" as former Fargo dweller Robert Zimmerman might exclaim. I guess that is all right since Japan is in much worse condition than us at the moment. So since the last update, sand bag filling operations stopped in Fargo due to new estimates for needed bags. So somewhere between 2.5 and 3 million sand bags were made. Moorhead stopped last week and Cass County did as well. In 2009 the flood was already here by this time. I think the 2010 flood crest already arrived by this time. But the crest in 2011 is taking its time. Winter continues to exert itself upon the region with weekly snow. I think the precipitation this year is higher than 2009. But it is slowly melting. More snow came this morning. A large community prayer meeting also was held a few weeks ago. For prayer meetings, it was pretty good. It was held in a huge ...

 I spent part of Wednesday last week making sandbags in preparation for flood season. It appears we are in for another major flood by all forecasts. Sandbag central was bustling. Mostly full of the younger folks but there were some older ones there too. Operations were in full swing. It looked as if there were about 4 spider devices running. I jumped right in and it all came back to me- how to get the bag open and quickly get it under the chute to get the sand. It was a real fun atmosphere. They gave incoming volunteers Hawaiian lais and stickers if they so wished to wear them. Organization was spit spot. My friends and I were only there for a little over an hour then the operations stopped for the evening. Approximately 115K sandbags were made. Just a few hundred thousand more until they reach 2 million total. There was a record volunteer turnout the day before. I was hoping to do more on Friday or the weekend, but sandbagging seemed to be meeting their goals and they closed ...