Area creeks and rivers, fast-flowing and potentially dangerous

Traveling around our many area creeks and rivers are hard to miss, as their waters rage following several days of high temperatures and rapidly melting snow.

“You may notice as you’re looking at the river is a lot of tree debris is coming down,” said Jay Cooke State Park’s Naturalist, Kristine Hiller. “So it could be breaking off shrubs and trees on the river edges or it might just be cleaning out trees that have already fallen. A flood is a little bit like a wildfire in a forest where it’s cleaning debris out as well.”

Last night, a blocked culvert caused some flooding at the intersection of Maple Grove Road and Mall Drive. By this afternoon, the culvert was clear and the water had receded.

A section of Norton Road, off Howard Gneson Road, is closed due to a culvert that washed out.

Norton Road is officially closed, it’s been barricaded off,” said Public Works Utilities Director for the City of Duluth, Jim Benning.

“If someone would run into a situation like this, obviously call 911,” said Benning. “This is an emergency situation that we need to know about immediately. If there’s other locations that have just localized flooding, residents can report that on the resident problem reporter on our Duluth’s [city] web page.”

We’ll continue to ensure you have the most up-to-date information regarding flooding around the Twin Ports.