Ice has moved out on the Chippewa River, but flooding remains a concern. National Weather Service Hydrologist Craig Schmidt said with lost of snow still on the ground, the threat will remain for at least the next month.
“The upper reaches of the Chippewa basin has quite a bit of snow still on the ground,” Schmidt said. “The water in that snow is two, three, four inches. Adding another inch or inch and a-half of water to that is going to further up the threat, as we get into the potential for warm temperatures and maybe additional rain in the next couple of weeks.”
Schmidt noted that there is still a large area of frost in the soil in Northern Wisconsin. “The frost depth is still maybe 20 to 30 inches, they may have thawed the first couple in inches, but there’s still a pretty wide band of frost in the soils.” He said those deep frost depths will stick around for another two to three weeks and contribute to run off of the snow melt.
WRDN
