From droughts to floods, what will Spring hold?

MANKATO, Minn. (KEYC) -

The story of January has been filled with snow, freezing rain, blizzards and as of Monday, rain.

Meteorologist Joshua Eckl said “If you recall we haven’t had much flooding across southern minnesota. oh going back to prior to the pandemic. we haven’t really had to talk about excessive river levels.”

Meteorologist Tyler Hasenstein believes with the National Weather Service believes that the above average precipitation ensures area droughts are no longer of concern.

He said “We have a pretty significant amount of moisture settled within that snowpack and that is more than enough to mitigate whatever lasting drought conditions we had going into the Winter”

Eckl added “The river levels are going to be able to hold a much of this snowfall and rainfall that we’ve seen over this winter because of those drought conditions.”

This statement is with the current amount of precipitation and that going into February,

Hasenstein said “There is a chance that we are going to see some pretty significant flooding and it will all depend on kind of how the second half of the Winter and into early Spring goes.... the rate of snowfall melt is going to be very big in this case.”

Eckl added “If that ground is still frozen that snow melts really quickly. and then on top of that we see these above average precipitation rates that we’ve been seeing into the winter so far that’s going to be aiding in the rising of these river levels and that’s going to push the flood concerns back to maybe a concerning level.”

As it stands now, the chance for flooding in the spring is at 5%.