There has been massive flooding in southern Alberta the last few days. Over a hundred thousand have been forced to evacuate, two people have died, and major buildings like the Saddledome have been flooded. Anyone in this area have any firsthand news?
There has been an ongoing discussion of the flash flooding in the CanaDoper thread over the past couple of days: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=16400176#post16400176
Yeah, probably the best thread for updates.
I’m in Calgary and up on a hill, thankfully. It’s very surreal here, especially now with army helicopters and an evacuated downtown. It’s starting to sound like downtown might be closed Monday at least, and possibly more then that. I’m on our company Emergency Response team and business continuity planning has started.
Agree with the others. Check the latest posts in the CanaDoper thread in MPSIMS.
For now, I’ll say that we’re okay here in Lethbridge, I think. Our city is cut in half by the Oldman River, which is currently running higher than I’ve ever seen, but the river is at the bottom of a 300-foot-deep valley. The concern here was that bridges carrying roads between the two halves of the city are at the bottom of the valley. A recent trip across the valley showed me that the river is a few feet below the bridge deck (it’s normally about 50 feet or so), but it is not expected to go any higher. So I think, for us, the worst has passed.
Currently, it is not good to be Alberta Bound.
Still OK (for now) to come visit Edmonton!
And all that water is now Medicine Hat- and Saskatoon-bound - hopefully it will die down a whole bunch between here and there!
Everyone I know in Calgary (and my husband and I) are in areas that aren’t really affected by flooding - we’re high up in the hills far away from any rivers. I went down to the flooding areas yesterday and took a bunch of pictures - I posted a slew of them in the Canadope thread.
I’ve lived in Calgary for almost 23 years, and we have never had flooding like this before - I think it was the combination of spring run-off still filling the rivers, then a week or more of rains on top of that. I’m not sure how we’re going to respond to this unprecedented flooding - all of downtown is underwater right now, and I don’t know how you’re going to move hundreds of high-rise buildings out of what is basically a flood plain between two rivers.
So far as I’m aware, as a born-and-raised Calgarian, floods this severe are completely unprecedented going all the way back to the establishment of the NWMP fort back in the 1800s. We’re hearing that the Bow River is running four times faster right now than it was during the major floods of 2005 that did severe damage to the town of High River, about 20 minutes south of Calgary.
Medicine Hat is in trouble, but Saskatoon and communities downstream are
(mostly) protected by the Gardiner Dam. Still, they’re raising water levels 17’ above normal in Saskatoon with a pre-emptive release of water from Lake Diefenbaker and there are warnings out to stay away from the parks and trails along the river. We’re supposed to be seeing peak flows here by tomorrow, a day before the first floodwater begins to arrive at the lake. 2200m[sup]3[/sup]/s, where normal is 500.
And the unfortunate souls in Cumberland House Cree Nation past Prince Albert are once again evacuating. Don’t ask me why that community hasn’t been moved, because every other spring it’s uninhabitable.
It’s good to hear that Saskatoon is theoretically protected. I’ve got my fingers crossed for Med. Hat and all the little communities between here and the Hudson Bay.