Southern Minnesota News

Heavy rains and flooding swamped a broad swathe of the northern Midwest this week, halting the harvest of corn and soybeans and forcing the closure of at least two Iowa crop processing plants, traders and farmers said on Friday. Farmers' concerns grew that standing water in fields could damage unharvested crops, while floodwaters swelled the Mississippi River and threatened to disrupt the loading of export-bound grain barges. Parts of northern Iowa and southern Minnesota received several inches of rain at midweek, with two-day rain totals topping 10 inches (25 cm) in some areas, meteorologists said. The region is expected to see two days of drier weather before more showers through next week, said David Streit, agricultural meteorologist with the Commodity Weather Group.

The Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory reports ice cover for all of the Great Lakes combined at around 52%, thanks to milder temperatures and gusty winds over the past several weeks. On March 1, nearly 89 percent of the Great Lakes were covered in ice. In just four weeks, the ice coverage on the Great Lakes has decreased almost in half. Winter is fading in the Northland, as it always does, but markedly faster than the past two years. Lake Erie reports ice coverage at around 69%, Lake Superior at 66%, Lake Huron at 58%, Lake Michigan at 21%, and Lake Ontario at 19%. The Iowa Great Lakes are officially declared ice-free for another season. The ice has been off most of western Lake Superior for a couple weeks now. Ice in the Duluth harbor and lower St. Louis River is going fast.

Rising flood waters were expected to make 11 locks and dams impassable on the mid- and upper-Mississippi River and force the closure of the river later on Monday from Bellevue, Iowa, to Saverton, Missouri, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said. The closure would be the most extensive since 2008 on that stretch of the country's busiest waterway, said Ron Fournier, public affairs officer for the Army Corps' Rock Island district. At least 80 barge tows are expected to be affected by the closure. The Mississippi River is the main shipping route to the U.S. Gulf Coast, where about 60 percent of all U.S. corn, soybeans and wheat exports exit the country. Near-record rains caused extensive flooding last week in parts of Minnesota, Iowa and the Dakotas.

River locks around St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minn. were expected to close on Tuesday due to rising water conditions, further delaying the latest tow arrival to St. Paul in the last 30 years. "We're looking at having to close the three Twin Cities locks. We've hit 1997 flood levels, and we may have to close locks 2, 3, 4, 5 and 5a on the Mississippi," said Dennis Erickson, chief of operations for the Army Corps of Engineers in St. Paul. The closings affect 120 miles of the upper Mississippi River from Minneapolis south to Winona, Minn. Based on current weather forecasts for the area, the Army Corps of Engineers anticipated closing the locks to all river traffic from April 10 through April 20. Water levels on the Mississippi have risen more than two feet in the Minneapolis-St.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will close additional locks on the upper Mississippi River north of St. Louis beginning on Monday (April 23) due to rising water levels, Army Corps officials said. Lock 22 near Hannibal, Mo., about 150 miles north of St. Louis, was scheduled to close on Monday afternoon and Lock 21 near Quincy, Ill., will close on Tuesday. The Army Corps had closed Lock 20 at Canton, Mo., over the weekend but was keeping Lock 19 near Keokuk, Ia., open for local traffic. So all locks from Canton north to Minnespolis, except Keokuk, were now closed to traffic due to high water. The latest lock closures are north of the confluence of the Illinois River, where barge traffic remains unaffected by the flood conditions on the upper Mississippi.