(3:30 PM) Mayor Cownie of Des Moines has just announced that based on assessments just completed a short while ago, at 6:00 PM today, they plan to discontinue the curfew and general evacuations in the flood plain, with the exception of the Birdland area. They will also at the same time re-open the downtown bridges that have been closed most of the week. He emphasized the importance of being careful, staying away from the levees, and just watching from home.

He also stated that the situation may change if weather, levee or other river conditions change.  The public should check regularly with the media for updates.…

*** This post will be updated and will be kept as a sticky at the top as major flooding events in Des Moines occur. ***

Downtown Des Moines is still contained, although other parts of the city have begun flooding more extensively as water from Saylorville Lake Reservoir has been filling the Des Moines River after the Emergency Spillway Dam was lowered last night.

Below is a live webcam of the river through downtown Des Moines (Sunday 6/15/2008: This image may now be pointing elsewhere in downtown Des Moines).

Update:

(1:00 PM) We’ve got about a foot of water on Court Avenue as water pressure on the storm sewer system has forced its way to the street. Manhole covers have popped off, but …

Got the high-speed running again, and we’re all very happy here!

I can’t say the same for everyone in town. We continue to have flooding throughout the state, and water levels are rising around Des Moines. The local AAA baseball park is at the confluence of the Des Moines and Raccoon Rivers, and city crews are placing sandbags around the facility (it was washed out pretty badly in 1993). Bottom line is, we’re in the middle of it right now, and we don’t know how it’s going to come out. Officials are confident that levees and flood walls built after 1993 will help provide better protection through this event.

Story City, Mason City and other points around the state are already under water to …

If you don’t see any other posts for a day or two, it’s just that our internet access is down. We had some kind of outage that should be repaired sometime Monday, but it might be Tuesday before you see anything substantive. Sorry about that. (had to use a public wifi to upload this post)

Probably the result of the storms that rolled through Iowa this weekend. We were actually out of town (in Omaha) most of the weekend, so we missed the stuff that hit Des Moines. However, we still ended up in the basement in Omaha Sunday morning when a tornado hit Omaha.

Quite a bit of flooding around the state. Some areas (including Des Moines) are expecting river crests close to 1993 …