Red River ice jams raise water levels and worry north of Winnipeg
'We don't know what's going to happen down the road': RM of St. Andrews emergency co-ordinator
Ice jams and high water on the Red River north of Winnipeg are creating heightened anxiety at a time of year when those conditions typically don't exist.
"This is totally unprecedented. We've never seen this before," said Jim Stinson, emergency measures co-ordinator for the rural municipality of St. Andrews.
"We have so much of this frazil ice coming down the river right now that it's packing up and backing up."
Frazil ice is a slushie-like mixture of crystals that can quickly increase in size as they cling to other objects in the water — logs, branches, larger blocks of ice.
Earlier in the month, the ice backup caused the water to rise and overflow the banks on either side in some places around Selkirk, about 35 kilometres north of Winnipeg, forcing a bridge to close for a while.
So far no homes are threatened but crews are monitoring the situation closely. Several pumps are running along River Road to keep water away from homes, Stinson said.
The municipality also warns people not to use too much water because septic fields are saturated.
Excessive rain in September and October led to washed-out roads, flooded basements and local states of emergency in southern Manitoba. That was then followed by an early October snowstorm that melted away and created more runoff.
It all prompted the province to operate Winnipeg's Red River Floodway in October, the first-ever time it was used in fall.
Water levels had slowly receded south of Winnipeg and inside the city since then, but areas to the north remained high because of the jams damming up the water.
On Wednesday, the backup was being felt all the way in Winnipeg, where river levels began rising again. A provincial government spokesperson said that was due to ice jamming near Lockport, and that "the risk of ice jam-related levels" will stay high until the river is fully covered by normal winter ice.
Typically, the water surface slowly freezes and becomes a solid layer, while the current continues to flow underneath. Instead, this year there has been a thaw-and-freeze pattern, which is more common in spring.
Daytime high temperatures in Winnipeg in the past five days have ranged between –2 C and 5 C. The normal daytime high for this time of year is –4 C, according to Environment Canada.
CBC meteorologist John Sauder is forecasting a high of –7 C on Thursday and then back to melting conditions on Friday and through the weekend.
Frazil ice is extremely unusual in November, Stinson said.
It's not very buoyant so it also gets carried below the surface, clumping and restricting the water flow and sometimes anchoring to the bottom of the riverbed.
It is often a springtime problem in the RM of St. Andrews as the water and ice push through narrow bends of the river on the way to Lake Winnipeg.
Normally, the fall is a drier time of year and river levels are low, ready to take in the spring melt.
"I've lived here for over 30 years and I've talked to people who've lived here up to 60-70 years, and they have never seen it like this. So we're learning as we go," Stinson said.
He's concerned about what will happen in spring.
"We don't know what's going to happen down the road."