More than seven inches of rain have fallen from Sunday night through Monday in the Iowa Great Lakes area, causing lake levels to get near records.
Dickinson County Emergency Management implemented a five mile-an-hour rule for all watercraft today. Captain Greg Harson of the DNR Law Enforcement Bureau says they hope to reduce the wake impact against the shoreline. “Anywhere there’s a high bank around the Great Lakes, there’s a potential for sloughing and for banks collapsing, so all the land is saturated at this point,” he says.
Harson says the change from drought to excess rain has already impacted boaters as docks are underwater. “Docks were installed this year at a lower level because the lakes were so low in the spring, and the ice went out super early this year,” Harson says. “So, everybody was in a hurry to get their docks put in, so they put them in at the level that was there, and now the lakes went up over 20 inches.”
The record flooding levels happened back in 2018. Dickinson County Emergency Management reports Big Spirit Lake and East and West Okoboji are about a half foot away from that level as of this morning (Tuesday).
(By Sheila Brummer, Iowa Public Radio)