The summer of 2018 was a really exciting time for me. I had just graduated high school and was working as a waitress to pay for my first semester at college. Unfortunately, most people don’t want to go out to eat when the roads are underwater and you have to paddle to work.
The skies may look sunny in this photo, but shortly before it was taken they were dumping 4-8 inches over the entirety of Northern Wisconsin. Some areas got up to 15 inches of rain which went on the record as "a 1,000-year rainfall". This massive storm started on Thursday, June 14th, and continued until Sunday the 17th. Multiple dams failed. Along with the rain came golf ball-sized hail and winds of up to 90 miles per hour.
Underneath a thin layer of soil, Northern Wisconsin is mostly clay, and that is why the water in these photos is orange (that and poor land management). This makes it really hard for the water to drain into the ground, so it lingers on top for a long time. When it is already saturated, it creates an even bigger problem. The Bad River watershed was overflowing and it wasn’t stopping! Highways were literally ripped to pieces. We were trapped in our small town for days. It’s hard to get out when you’re surrounded by water and all the roads are impassable. (Your mother will not appreciate it if you suggest tubing down the roads.)
The worst part is that this had happened just two years before. The roads had just been fixed and now they would have to be redone. Our community is incredibly poor, so we didn’t have the money necessary to improve infrastructure, and we were literally paying for it.
Although there were minimal deaths, some of the damage it did to the environment— natural and built— still lingers. Prentice Park, located in my hometown of Ashland, is still littered with huge, uprooted trees. Most of my favorite beaches were completely obliterated. The town is waiting, unprepared, for it to happen again.
As I mentioned earlier, poor land management of the upper watershed (including but not limited to the Whittlesey and Fish Creek basin, parts of the Bad River Slough) meant that there was a lot of clearing of land for logging and agriculture, both of which exacerbated the situation.
Sources:
Kaeding, Danielle. “Northern Wisconsin Officials Assessing Flood Damage.” Wisconsin Public Radio, December 9, 2019. https://www.wpr.org/northern-wisconsin-officials-assessing-flood-damage.
Krueger, Andrew. “Flash Flooding Swamps Parts of NE Minnesota, NW Wisconsin; Some Rivers Still Rising.” MPR News, June 17, 2018. https://www.mprnews.org/story/2018/06/17/flash-flooding-northeastern-minnesota-northwestern-wisconsin-carlton-county-superior.
US Department of Commerce, and Noaa. “Major June Flooding In the Northland.” National Weather Service. NOAA's National Weather Service, July 18, 2018. https://www.weather.gov/dlh/June15-17_2018flooding.
With winds at 90 miles an hour, along with the rain, I assume that the flooded currents must've been pretty choppy. Were there rip-currents and other issues caused by that strong of wind + that much water?
ReplyDeleteI'm realizing that this is way late, but yes. There were ships that were ripped out of the harbors only to wash up on beaches weeks later. The National Forests along the water became super inundated and the roots of trees pulled right out of the ground when the winds toppled the trees. I have a picture of my brother standing next to the roots of one tree which extend nearly three times his height in the air.
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