Iowans living along the swollen Missouri River are being reminding not to get too concerned about the minor rises in the water levels they’re seeing. Jim Meyer, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, says the recent upward change in the level isn’t because of bigger releases from dams upstream.
“Anytime you’re going to get rainfall coming into river basins that empty into the Missouri River, you’re going to get additional little bubbles that come up like that,” he says. Meyer says rainfall upstream can easily cause a rise in river levels of between four and five-inches.
Meyer says, “They take heavy rainfall amounts up in the Dakotas and then as they dump into the Missouri aren’t necessarily able to be controlled by what’s being released out of the reservoirs.” He says variation in the river level is common. Meyer says, “The river will drop a few tenths of a foot and then if we get another big thunderstorm complex, I could see them going back up a few tenths of a foot.”
Meyer says minor level fluctuations occur even when the Missouri River isn’t flooding.
By Karla James