Photo by Karin Elton Michael Gillispie, senior service hydrologist from the National Weather Service in Sioux Falls, presented on Tuesday.

MARSHALL — The good news as far as precipitation forecasts for the Marshall area — it will be normal rainfalls, not the record-breaking deluge of the last couple of years.

The bad news is, the soil, rivers and lakes are so saturated that a normal amount of rain will cause flooding this spring because there is nowhere for the water to go.

Michael Gillispie, senior service hydrologist from the National Weather Service out of Sioux Falls, S.D., spoke to an interested and varied audience Tuesday afternoon at the AmericInn Lodge & Suites meeting room. The presentation was offered by the Marshall Area Chamber of Commerce and sponsored by Titan Machinery and Bremer Bank.

Gillispie focused on the last couple of wet years, the current moisture/snow/river conditions, and gave an outlook for the spring for the Marshall area.

He said the last couple of years’ rainfall has been “a departure from the normal precipitation from October 1, of 2018 through September 30 of last year.”

He showed a graph to the audience of rainfall trends in the United States.

“It was 20 inches above normal for the year. The amount of the United States was 16 to 20 inches above normal last year. It wasn’t just Marshall, but the entire Missouri River Basin, Mississippi River Basin, the Ohio River Basin — everywhere had very much above normal precipitation — except for our good friends in Iowa. They were pretty close to normal. I don’t know how they lucked out. Other than that, the entire region was much, much above normal precipitation-wise last year.”

He showed a graph of the annual precipitation for Marshall going back to 1935.

“The top three record wettest years in Marshall have all occurred in the last 10 years including a new record set last year — 45, almost 46, inches of rain fell in Marshall — 2010 had been the record at 43, 2018 now down to third place.”

Gillispie talked about the flooding the area endured last spring.

“Flooding — the big one around here was mid-to-late March,” he said. “We look at the snowpack from March 10 of last year. This is the water equivalent of a snowpack. What we had last year — we had a lot of 6 to 10 inch values. The snowpack had the equivalent of 6 to 10 inches of rain once it melted.”

“Last March, Marshall had 150 percent to 200 percent of normal precipitation for Lyon County, but when you add 3 inches of rain to 6 inches of water that’s already on the ground, now all of a sudden you’re getting 9 inches of rain running off into the river system all at once. Top that off with a lot of ice action — it was very cold late last winter. Ice was very thick on all the rivers and streams around the area,” he added.

Many rivers in his coverage area hit new record crests.

“The highest flow was in 1993, the amount of the water coming through, because of the ice and some of the changes in the levy system around town, the water got to a higher elevation than it ever had, but once again, it wasn’t isolated; it was the whole area.”

Some areas broke March’s record in September. Marshall lucked out as far as the September flooding. But it did extend to Pipestone and Lincoln counties. Lyon and Murray counties got decent amounts of rain, but the flooding wasn’t as bad as in the east. So two record flood events in 2019.

“How are we sitting right now as we go into hopefully the last parts of winter soon,” he said. “What are we looking at?”

He showed the latest snow depth maps.

“The area south of I-90, generally six inches or less of snowfall, he said. “I did notice driving up here the snow depth was not that bad. We’re looking at 10 to 20 inches of snow. The water content of that snowpack, I-90 south, 2 inches or less. Decent amount of water, out there. It’s higher than what we normally see in late January, but 2 to 4 inches of water by itself is not going to cause any huge problems as we go forward. It’s going to depend on how much more we get and what kind of melt we have. As we sit right now, snow-wise, we’re not in too bad of shape. It hasn’t been a terribly bad winter so far.”

Where this gets tricky is with soil moisture. Gillispie gestured toward a chart showing snow anomalies across the United States.

The Marshall area has “roughly 4 to 6 inches of water in the soils above normal.”

The soil isn’t frozen too bad, which is good, he said.

“The soils are saturated; they can’t hold any water. The water table is higher than it’s ever been; it can’t hold any water. Not good things going forward.”

The rivers are higher than they’ve ever been going into the winter, he said.

“The Redwood River is up,” he said. “More water is flowing through it right now than what we started at last year.”

The outlook for “February, March April — we’re seeing below normal temperatures,” he said. “When we start averaging things out over the next three months — we’re seeing below normal temperatures.”

He had good news to share as far as precipitation.

“Good news precipitation-wise over that three-month period we’re pretty much near normal. The bad news is — even with normal precipitation, we’re going to have worse flooding because of how wet things are and the fact that we don’t have anything out there to store that water. The soil is full, rivers are full, lakes are full, aquifers are full — that water just doesn’t have anywhere to go. So even normal precipitation is going to cause worse than normal flooding as we go forward,” he said.

Gillispie opened his presentation to questions at which time Lyon County Commissioner Gary Crowley asked if the record rainfalls were a sign of a warmer climate.

“Possibly,” said Gillispie. “Warmer air holds more water.”

With all this water, someone else asked, is drought becoming less of a concern? “No,” Gillispie answered. “You don’t have to worry this year, but in 2010, 2011 in much of the upper Midwest, there were record floods and in 2012 was the worse drought we’ve had in awhile.”

Marshall Police Chief Jim Marshall commented that he has appreciated Gillispie’s help during weather events.

“Mike’s always been available to us, especially last year,” Marshall said. “Thank you for always being available to us as a city — we’ve called mornings, evenings. You guys are always willing to help.”

“The National Weather Service is always staffed with at least two people around the clock,” Gillispie said. “We’re a federal government agency funded by your tax dollars and we are there to help.”