Good news on the flood front.
The St. Croix River at Stillwater has crested, and is on its way down. The river reached 689.26 feet above sea level on Monday – its highest level this year – and is now steadily dropping. On Wednesday, it fell below major flood stage (689 feet above sea level) for the first time since Friday. It should drop almost a foot by May 3, according to the Twin Cities office of the National Weather Service.
“I’m hoping for a drier forecast and keeping my fingers crossed,” Stillwater Mayor Ted Kozlowski said Wednesday. “At this rate, we could be back to around normal by Memorial Day.”
This year’s flood was the seventh-highest crest on record at Stillwater since the National Weather Service started officially keeping track of river levels in the 1930s. In 2019, the river reached 688.48 feet above sea level; in 2001, it reached 691.10 feet above sea level.
The river must drop another four feet — to 685 feet above sea level — before city crews will begin removing the 3- to 6-foot-high, 20-feet-wide and 1/2-mile-long temporary levee that was built to protect downtown, said Shawn Sanders, the city’s director of public works.
The Mississippi River is expected to crest at 18.3 feet on Thursday. On Wednesday, the river was at 18.07 feet; the river is at major flood stage in downtown St. Paul at 17 feet.
Officials say Minnesota has so far avoided the worst impacts of spring flooding brought on by an extraordinarily large snowpack in the basins of the state’s major rivers.
