Flood — Davison, South Dakota

2019-09-12 to 2019-09-16 · near Metzgerville, Davison, South Dakota

Event narrative

Heavy rainfall from September 10-12 totalling 7 to 8 inches near Mitchell led to widespread areal flooding. Travel was significantly hampered across most of the county, including the closure of Interstate 90. Smaller creeks and ponding resulted in the closure of most township and county roads. Five miles south of Mitchell, a bridge over Enemy Creek was washed out, requiring a swift water rescue of one person who was overwhelmed by the current. Three residents located one-half mile east of this bridge were also evacuated from waist deep waters. This bridge was one of nine damaged across the county. A no-wake order was placed on Lake Mitchell due to extremely high water. Significant street flooding occurred around Mitchell for the better part of three days. Property damage costs are rough estimates. Flooding also resulted in the loss of crops. Crop loss estimates provided by the United States Department of Agriculture.

Wider weather episode

A frontal zone remained locked in place under southwest flow aloft as a series of mid-level waves moved across the region over a three day period. Widespread heavy rainfall resulted and amounts reached two-day records for several locations including Platte (6.29 inches), White Lake (6.28 inches), Bridgewater (8.05 inches), Montrose (5.63 inches), Alexandria (8.30 inches), Madison (7.63 inches), Howard (7.05 inches), 2 miles south of Winfred (7.01 inches), and 2 miles north of Chester (8.52 inches). Flooding, both river and areal, tallied nearly $17 million dollars in damages across southeast South Dakota.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (43.5001, -98.3186)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 858232. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.