Flood waters return to Red River Valley

A farmer near Ada can't see much of his cropland right now, because it's under flood water. Some places in northwestern Minnesota have measured a foot of rain since Labor Day.

Dwight Heitman's farm is near the Wild Rice River, a tributary of the rain-swollen Red River.

Heitman said typically the systems that produce heavy downpours taper off in late August or early September. "Previous years it was Labor Day weekend, now with these heavy rains again this last weekend, I had about 550 acres under water this time," Heitman said.

Heitman said the high water hasn't had too much impact on his harvest because he got most of his crops in before the most recent heavy rains.

But last weekend's downpours caused a temporary halt to the sugar beet harvest in the Red River Valley.

Forecaster Vince Godon with the National Weather Service in Grand Forks said it's unusual to have so much rain this late in the year.

"The rivers have come up in the fall before, but nothing like this, this is fairly unusual, usually we don't want to go into the freeze-up with river levels this high because if you have a lot of snow over the winter and certain kind of melt in the spring, you know, it's going to lead to more river flooding," Gogon said.

Godon said the Red has about reached its crest in Fargo-Moorhead but is still rising downstream.

No major travel problems are reported in the region, but some secondary roads and bridges have been closed because of the high water.