The Missouri River south of Garrison Dam continues to rise.
"We're capturing the runoff from the mountain snowpack and recent rains from Montana," said Garrison Dam project operations manager Todd Lindquist. "We're putting that into our exclusive flood control zone, and we've gradually increased releases to help evacuate that flood control zone."
Lindquist said Wednesday, releases from the dam will increase to 52,000 cubic feet per second. He said that water will take some time to get to the Bismarck-Mandan area.
"We're anticipating a river stage (at Bismarck-Mandan) at 12 feet," Lindquist said.
Flood stage in Bismarck-Mandan is 14-and-a-half feet.
Lindquist said he believes releases won’t have to go higher than that.
"The mountain snowpack is tapering off," Lindquist said. "There's less than 2 inches of the water equivalent in the Garrison reach. That should come to an end here pretty quick."
A major rain could change that. Lindquist said while he isn’t seeing anything like that in the near term, he will be watching forecasts in the basin.
