Ice jams raise White to near-record levels

Two rural families south of Reliance are dealing with near record flooding on the White River after an ice jam formed and caused the river to rush onto their land Tuesday.

Since last week, Joel and Vicki Stuart have been moving sheep, horses, cattle and chickens from pens and pastures off their farm a quarter-mile west of the Highway 47 bridge over the White River. They even moved furniture to her parents’ farm, 10 miles away in rural Hamill.

Tuesday morning, floodwaters swallowed a field east of their farm and a sheep pen, with shallow water covering parts of other pens. Water crawled up to 100 to 150 feet of the couple’s house, Vicki Stuart said.

“The river channel was all just ice sitting there,” she said, adding the couple has lived there a year and a half. “We never had to worry about my own stuff there.”

Dana Byre, who farms with his father, Ed, and brother, Brad, has been monitoring the water lapping closer to a machinery shop near a flooded field a quarter-mile east of the bridge.

“It’s never been this high,” he said.

For the Stuarts and Byres, flooding near the Highway 47 bridge rose to a near record, according to Melissa Smith, a National Weather Service hydrologist in Rapid City.

Ice from Interior and Murdo jams flowed toward the Highway 47 bridge, and a jam formed late Monday afternoon that caused river levels to rise above flood stage at 15.4 feet, NWS said. Water rose overnight, cresting at 24.4 feet just before the ice jam broke at 11:15 a.m. Tuesday.

That level is just a half-foot shy of a record set in March 1994.

Once the jam broke, the river level dropped 3 feet, Smith said. She expects more fluctuation in river levels if jams reform downstream between the bridge and the Missouri River south of Oacoma. Additional rain could cause more flooding, Smith said.

White River at the Highway 47 bridge has been prone to ice jams since the 1960s, Smith said.

Lyman County has no plans to use dynamite to break up any ice jams along the river, though some portions were 2 miles long, Emergency Management Director Steve Manger said.

“It’s something we are going to have to let run its course,” he said. “It would take a lot of effort to blow it all up. I don’t think it would be very cost efficient.”

Manger said landowners along the river are accustomed to spring flooding.

“They take steps to avoid anything as much as possible,” he said.

Stuart said her grandmother used to live on her farm. When a flood engulfed her house in the late ’70s, she rebuilt on higher ground.

“We … thought it was way high enough,” Stuart’s father, Darrell Larson, said. “Now maybe it isn’t.”

Stuart’s brother and sisterin-law fought the flood of ’94 there.

When the river dropped Tuesday afternoon, Stuart said she could see where water and ice hit trees along the banks.

Byre’s family used to live along the river bottom before his father built a new house in 1980 on the top of a hill north of the Highway 47 bridge. Floodwaters swamped the house in 1977.

Last year, the river flooded much of the field east of the bridge, with cleanup forcing the Byres to be unable to plant crops until late June.

“I think it looks much worse with ice this year,” he said.

Byre said he noticed midafternoon that the ice was starting to jam a quarter-mile south of the bridge.

“I hope it don’t get worse,” he said. “If it gets backed up to the bridge, water has to go somewhere.”

NWS forecasts the river will drop to 19.3 feet on Sunday. Some ice will be left along the banks as the water drops, Smith said.

For Stuart, that can’t come soon enough. She expected to spend a second-straight night at her parents’ farm Tuesday night.

“I hope this is the high point and we can get on to work that needs to be done,” Stuart said.

Tags: white river, ice jam, news, state