ALERT! Warm Weather Brings Flooding to Idaho

It brings back awful memories from eight years ago. The meltdown began after a fierce series of storms, and large swaths of Cassia and Minidoka Counties flooded. Hundreds of cattle drowned in the fields. It was catastrophic for many farmers and ranchers.

This year may not be quite so dire, however. We’re not even to spring yet and seeing high water in the region.

I’ve seen posts from both counties, including one on Facebook from the Minidoka County Sheriff’s Office, which was providing sandbags for people looking to hold back rising water.

This followed a string of mostly wet days over the previous week and a half. We dealt with heavy wet snow on several days, and then a steady 24-hour rain from Sunday morning into Monday morning.

Dry conditions over the next several days are likely welcome. Most of our mountaintops are covered in snow, and a lot more runoff is ahead in March straight through early summer.

I was told back in 2017 that the danger for cattle is that they’ve evolved in a way that they don’t recognize the water rising around them. We should also point out that many of the roads built through the high desert act as dams when the water rises.

From what I’ve seen, news media hasn’t given the story much attention so far this year, but then the tide for news media has been slacking for several years. It’s sure news to the people impacted by flooding, and we need to be prepared to spring into action and give them a hand. Because it’s the Christian approach, and because our economy depends on the survival of livestock.