After deadly Texas floods, Minnesota officials say they are ‘attuned to how bad things can get’

The landscape and climate of Minnesota have mostly spared it from the kind of flash flooding that devastated Texas and took at least 100 lives this month. Still, flash floods have struck the state over the years, sometimes with deadly results.

To protect the public, the state monitors a network of more than 200 gauges to detect rapidly rising waterways. Forty-seven of them automatically send flood alerts to local emergency officials.

“The system we have ... would be considered robust compared to other states, in terms of being able to monitor a variety of streams in a variety of settings,” said Kenneth Blumenfeld, senior climatologist for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. “We have an entire unit of the DNR that’s devoted to installing and checking on those stream gauges.”

The National Weather Service controls the issuance of emergency broadcasts and cellphone alerts for potential disasters, including floods. Local officials maintain the sirens that are used almost exclusively for tornadoes, a far more common threat in this region. In light of the Texas disaster, Minnesota may consider adding floods to its recommendations on when to use those sirens.

The National Weather Service has issued seven flash flood emergency alerts in Minnesota, starting in 2012 and most recently in 2018.

Flash flooding can have severe consequences: In 2007, seven people died after heavy rains inundated southeastern Minnesota.

Eric Waage led the National Guard response in Winona County during those floods. Waage, Hennepin County’s director of emergency management, said authorities have multiple ways of alerting people that they’re in harm’s way, but warning systems don’t guarantee safety.

“I think emergency managers generally are very attuned to how bad things can get and are preparing for that,” Waage said. “We write contingency plans for that.”

The six National Weather Service offices that oversee Minnesota forecasts all have good relationships with local and state officials, Blumenfeld said. “We have some cultural and structural resiliency,” he said. “That doesn’t guarantee safety. It just means that there might be more connections between the forecasters and the communities that they serve than you find in other places.”

Texas officials are coming under scrutiny over whether they properly warned people of the coming flood. In recent years, one county considered but never implemented a plan to include emergency sirens for flood warnings.

Originally installed to warn Americans of air raids and to take shelter, sirens are now a critical tool for warning the public of imminent weather dangers, Waage said.

In 1965, Minnesota first used its siren systems to warn the public of a tornado outbreak, and that’s what they’ve been used for almost exclusively ever since, Waage said.

That can be an issue, Waage said, when the expectation for one hazard isn’t helpful — or is dangerous — in other scenarios. This came up during the 2023 wildfires in Maui, which killed more than 100 people, Waage said. Sirens in Hawaii are typically used to warn people of tsunamis, so officials chose not to use them, worried people would run to high ground in the hills, where the fires were raging, he said.

That’s why sirens should always be used with other warning systems, including cellphone alerts and emergency radio broadcasts, Waage said.

In 2019, Hennepin County used sirens to warn people of life-threatening hail that had reached the size of softballs.

In St. Louis County, the state’s largest by land area, a National Weather Service meteorologist is embedded with the county so that emergency alerts can happen faster, said Joshua Brinkman, the county’s emergency management coordinator.

Emergency alerts were sent more than a dozen times in May when several wildfires spread rapidly, and again recently when the town of Cook, hard-hit by flooding last summer, experienced heavy rain. The county also works with the St. Louis County Rescue Squad to conduct door-knocking. Portable river gauges are deployed when flooding is anticipated, especially for areas that may not be reached by alerts.

The National Weather Service has exclusive control of weather-related alerts, including flash flood and tornado emergencies, which means coordinating between agencies is critical for safely warning the public, officials said.

“Public warning is a significant challenge,” Waage said. “In the end, safety still depends upon people keeping aware of the possibility of dangerous weather throughout the season, and then taking action when they get a warning.”

Waage said that state emergency managers will likely address the role of sirens in flood warnings when they revisit their policy recommendations — most recently updated last year.

Like Texas, Minnesota is facing a growing risk from floods thanks to climate change. The most recent National Climate Assessment shows that much of the Midwest, including Minnesota, has gotten wetter over the last several decades by roughly 5% to 15%. Minnesota’s heaviest rainfall events are also becoming more severe and frequent, according to state climatologists.

Minnesota has experienced 16 “mega-rain events” since 1973, when the state began tracking such storms. The agency counts a storm as a mega-rain event if 6 inches of rain or more fall over an area of 1,000 square miles in 24 hours or less, with at least 8 inches falling somewhere within that zone.

One of those mega-rain events pounded the Mankato area in July 2020, two inundated Crow Wing and Wabasha counties in July and August 2016, and another hit the Duluth area in 2012. The Duluth flood caused $167 million in damages and unleashed chaos at Lake Superior Zoo when floodwaters washed out several animals from their exhibits, including a seal and a polar bear.

The state’s most notable mega-rain occurred on an August weekend in 2007, Blumenfeld said. Seven people died after more than 15 inches of rain fell over a 24-hour period — a state record — near the city of Hokah in southeast Minnesota, according to the DNR. That flood prompted Whitewater State Park to relocate its campgrounds.

Since taking office, President Donald Trump has made sweeping cuts to federal agencies, including the National Weather Service, which is housed under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

In late February, news broke that hundreds of NWS forecasters had been fired or put on probationary status, fueling concerns that critical emergency alert systems could be understaffed.

The National Weather Service declined to comment on staffing in Minnesota, despite multiple requests from the Minnesota Star Tribune to the NWS office in Chanhassen and the public affairs office in Washington.

A statement provided by NWS spokesperson Marissa Anderson said the federal agency “is taking steps to address those who took a voluntary early retirement option,” including by giving “short-term temporary duty assignments” to existing staff and advertising job vacancies “with the greatest operational need.”

“The National Weather Service continues to meet its core missions amid recent reorganization efforts and is taking steps to prioritize critical research and services that keep the American public safe and informed,” the statement said. “NWS is committed to investing in new technology and prioritizing public safety.”

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and Minnesota Pollution Control Agency coordinate with NWS staff for extreme weather and air quality forecasts.

“Cuts in that area are concerning, both at the National Weather Service, as well as NOAA,” MPCA Commissioner Katrina Kessler said this week. “We haven’t seen a breakdown yet, and I think we will continue to invest our state dollars and our state resources in making sure that we are forecasting to the best of our ability and making sure that people are made aware when threats are in the forecast.”

Jana Hollingsworth of the Minnesota Star Tribune contributed to this story.