Photo courtesy Scott Vaske, South Dakota Wheat Growers local manager.

So, you live in a “hillside” town… the Wessington Hills loom above the community on the west side. How could you have flooding? Well, it happened.

It’s hard to tell how much rain fell in the night Sunday (June 20) and early Monday (June 22, 2010), but Lloyd Kraft’s Official Weather said 4.3 inches. Some of the residential rain gauges showed upwards to six inches. Either way, it came in a hurry, and homes and businesses that have previously been immune to ground water runoff began to take on water.

MOST AREA FARMERS have had to farm around low spots in their fields this Spring. The pond in a corn field seems to be the norm this year. A few area fields still await dry weather to plant. Sunflowers are one of the few crops that can still be planted and mature before frost. Duke Wenzel Photograph

Basements were flooded in many homes. When South Dakota Wheatgrowers Assoc. local manager Scott Vaske headed to work on Monday morning he was greeted by the scene at left…. the elevators at the north end of town looked as if they were standing in a lake. The basements beneath both elevators were also flooded full — to a depth he estimated to be 8-9 feet.

Of course a storm like this doesn’t just happen to town folks…. in the country the rural roads were badly damaged, some to the point of being impassable. The creek that runs through South Gulch, on the southern edge of Wessington Springs, ran over the road as it passed the county road at the far west end of Main Street. And that, folks is A LOT of water!

Firemen enter the home of Arlein Fransen where the basement had been flooded by the May 21, 2010 storm that dropped an official 4.3" of rain overnight in Wessington Springs. --Duke Wenzel PHotograph, 2010

Water escapes through a culvert at the east end of Main Street. On the other side of the road the South Gulch creek had previously built up and flowed over the road.... for the first time in the memory of most locals. True Dakotan photo/Duke Wenzel May 21, 2010

SAND CREEK ran over the road southwest of Alpena last week. The road had been closed a couple of weeks as water continued to flow over the roadway. The 4.32 inches of rain early Monday morning has again filled the valley with water and kept the “Road Closed” signs up for at least a few more days. True Dakotan Photograph/Duke Wenzel, May 21, 2010

  We thought you might like to see Scott Vaske’s photograph that he took on his way to work.

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