Flooding just getting started

Angry water is over roads from Minnesota to Idaho. Hulett homeowners sandbagged the Belle Fourche while ranchers at Alzada watched helplessly as they fretted the Little Missouri. The bridges over the Bighorn River on I-90 at Crow Agency were reported earlier as out closing US212 at Lame Deer and sending this blogger through Colstrip. The confluence of the Bighorn with the Yellowstone at Custer, Montana was coated in debris.

Little Missouri flooding at Camp Crook as reported by the Journal's David Montgomery:

The ground in the area is completely saturated and won't absorb more water any time soon, National Weather Service hydrologist Melissa Smith said. To make matters worse for low-lying areas, the wet weather is expected to continue for at least the next seven days.

The Army Corps of Engineers plans discharges from dams in North and South Dakota. More from the RCJ:

Spring snowmelt runoff and rain are pushing Lake Oahe (oh-AW'-hee) to near-record levels. That's leading to increased releases from the Missouri River dam that creates the reservoir and worries about possible flooding in the Pierre area.

Living on Earth tackles rewilding the Mississippi River system:

Following the great flood of 1927, the U.S. government took on one of the mostly expensive projects in American history: engineering the Mississippi River to avoid floods and facilitate shipping. John Barry, author of the book Rising Tide, the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America, tells host Bruce Gellerman about the successes and consequences of that endeavor.

Paul Huttner:

One thing is clear. A consistent and powerful jet stream is racing across the central USA this spring, and has triggered massive tornado outbreaks. The root causes may be studied for years, but the trend continues.

Having heard lots of public radio in two thousand miles (half of it at 55MPH) this Quirks and Quarks episode had me enraptured:

Whales with Regional Accents
Oxygen for Early Life
Tarantulas' Webbed Feet
Universal Accelerator
Parks Canada at 100