The State of Fargo

It has been snowing all day in Fargo. The city awoke to approximately seven inches of accumulation and the snowfall has continued throughout the day.

But the citizens of Fargo/Moorhead do not care.

Rain fell from Sunday night until early Tuesday. Monday night brought a substantial thunderstorm with heavy rain lasting into the morning.

But the citizens of Fargo/Moorhead do not care.

The United States economy is in disarray. Barack Obama unveiled his $3.6 trillion budget proposal. AIG is recording massive losses despite billions of dollars in federal relief and yet is paying out bonuses.

But the citizens of Fargo/Moorhead do not care.

There is one thing that the citizens of Fargo care about:

The mighty Red River is rising quickly and threatening the Fargo/Moorhead community in it's entirety.

The most recent numbers tweeted by @redriveratfargo read,

Current height of the Red River at Fargo is 36.39 feet. 18.39 feet above flood stage. 3.21 feet below 1997 crest.

The Red River is predicted to crest at forty-one feet on Saturday morning. That is the highest in recorded history.

Volunteers are showing up in the thousands to fill sandbags and build dikes in attempts to stave off the river, but the Red is rising fast. Twenty-four hours ago the river was at 31.75 feet. A view of the stages of the progression has been compiled by the Minnesota Public Radio website.

The Fargodome has been transformed into a sandbag-filling hive where hundreds of volunteers shovel, hold, tie, and move the sandbags to be distrubuted throughout the city by police-escorted semi-trucks. Some 2.5 to 3 million sandbags are needed. The most recent number reflect somewhere around 1.3 million.

Homeowners along the river hope against hope that they will not suffer the same fate of those living in Oxbow, where the Wild Rice River meets the mighty Red just minutes south of Fargo. Some Oxbow residents lost their battles and had to be rescued this morning.

Whispers of city-wide evacuation echo down the sandbag line. No one wants to leave their livelihood behind, but if the river levels rise above the predicted value, it will most likely become necessary.

Overall, uncertainty is in the air. Volunteers continue to pour their efforts into sandbagging; however, no one can truly conceive of what will unfold in the next few days.