Farm field flooding from rising rivers and lakes in the northern Red River Valley and region have dissipated as quickly as National Weather Service projections declined in early May.
Kelly Erickson, Hallock, Minn., said the flooding turned into "kind of a non-event," from what he'd expected. The crest on the river at Drayton, N.D., came on May 7, and he expected it to persist for a few days.
"We've lost some roads and some access, but in regards to what the flooding has been in the past, it wasn't anything like we were told it was supposed to be," said Erickson, who is the president of the American Sugarbeet Growers Association.
Erickson had expected serious planting delays on up to 1,500 acres, but now doesn't expect to lose any whole fields. "We're going to have problems on maybe 500 acres," he said. He expected most in the area to have started planting by Monday.
"Everything at this end of the Red River Valley will start popping on Monday if we don't get rains," Erickson said last week. He expected to be on "flood ground" by about May 21.
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Similarly, farmers in the Devils Lake area were more optimistic than they'd expected because of revised lake levels for Devils Lake.
"It's not going to be as bad as we'd thought," Dan Webster, Penn, N.D., said last week. His farm has lost a total of 5,000 acres to the lake in the past decade and -- cheered by declining water in 2012 -- he'd hoped to gain back 1,000 acres, and had worked to clear trees and other debris that had floated into farmland and now were exposed. Now, he thinks he could get back 500 acres this year, "if the lake doesn't come up a bunch more."
