An overland flood watch has been issued for all of southern and central Manitoba as rain forecast this week adds more water to the already serious flooding situation throughout the area.
Manitoba Transportation and Infrastructure’s Hydrologic Forecast Centre says a weather system that moved in Monday may bring as much as 60 millimetres of water to the region over the next five days, with even higher amounts possible in some localized areas.
“Heavy rain occurring over a short period on saturated soil could create overland flooding,” the province’s late Monday afternoon flood update said, adding most ditches and waterways are already full or near capacity.
The province’s forecast says Monday’s wet weather could bring between 20 and 40 mm of rain, and a second system starting Friday could bring another 20 to 40 mm of rain.
A flood warning was also issued for the Vermillion River Monday.
Flood warnings remain in place for parts of the Red River north of Emerson, except for Winnipeg.
Heavy snowfall and spring rainstorms have left many parts of Manitoba flooded, and some 30 municipalities and First Nations are under local states of emergency.
Roads have been washed out in some areas and homes and properties have been also been flooded out.
The hardest-hit area is Peguis First Nation, 160 kilometres north of Winnipeg, where some 1,800 people have been evacuated from homes surrounded or flooded by the swollen Fisher River. The river has dropped in recent days, but with more rain in the forecast this week it is likely to rise again.
“We are expecting flooding to reoccur in areas where the water levels have receded,” read a notice posted Monday on the community’s official Facebook page. The water may rise to a point 30 centimetres above its highest level last week, the notice added.
To the south, the Red River between the United States border and Winnipeg is expected to crest this week.
The river has already become a lake in some areas, flooding farmland and roads including the main highway between Winnipeg and North Dakota.
But communities along the Red are protected by dikes and diversion channels that can withstand higher water than there was during the so-called flood of the century in 1997.
The rain forecasted to fall before the end of the week will likely prolong the crest, and could make it higher, Manitoba’s minister for emergency measures, Doyle Piwniuk, said earlier in the day Monday.
The province says the Red River Floodway and the Portage Diversion continue to operate in order to reduce water levels in Winnipeg.
Flow in the floodway channel was near 40,000 cubic feet per second (CFS) Monday morning, the province said, while flows upstream of the floodway inlet were roughly 80,000 CFS.
— with files from The Canadian Press