Premium ContentMouse over Home then click on Premium Content for information.Noah had the rain — 40 days and 40 nights.
We just had a flood, interspersed with bursts of rain.
Tuesday at 1 p.m., the flood warning at Omaha ended, said Dave Pearson, hydrologist for the National Weather Service at Valley. It had been in effect since May 31, he said.
For the record, Pearson said he considers the river at Omaha to have been at flood stage from May 31 to Sept. 10.
That means:
• For 103 days, the Missouri River was at or above flood stage, though it briefly dipped below flood stage June 1.
• For 105 days, the metro area was under a flood warning. The area remains under an advisory, because low-lying areas remain flooded, Pearson said.
Even though the Missouri River dropped below flood stage at Omaha on Saturday, weather service personnel waited to lift the warning to be more certain that rain didn’t cause the river to rise, Pearson said. Wednesday’s rain wasn’t expected to cause that.
Low-lying parks such N.P. Dodge in north Omaha and Haworth in Bellevue remain underwater, but no significant metro-area infrastructure is being flooded, Pearson said.
"The more significant flooding looks to be behind us,” he said.
Neither Omaha nor Council Bluffs is out of the woods, though. The two cities’ drainage systems cannot function properly because the river remains comparatively high.
This year’s flooding has been historic — and unnatural. It was the Missouri River’s first, extensive managed flood by the Army Corps of Engineers.
The corps this summer doled out pent-up snowmelt and spring rains from behind six large dams on the river.
As a result, flood levels along the river valley were lower than nature would have caused but more prolonged.
Contact the writer:
402-444-1102, nancy.gaarder@owh.com
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