Susan Stocker, Boating Law Administrator for the Iowa DNR, summed up the situation in one sentence. “The last four years, as we’ve been told, we haven’t had a lot of water, and now it all seems to have come all at once.”
All that water will make a difference for anyone seeking to swim or boat this Fourth of July.
Many areas are experiencing year-to-date rainfall totals above average:
- Cedar Rapids saw 17.99 inches of rainfall.
- Dubuque had 25.70 inches of rainfall.
- Iowa City saw 21.85 inches of rainfall.
- Waterloo recorded 27.58 inches of rainfall.
Dubuque’s total is 6.71 inches above normal for this time of year, while Waterloo’s is 8.65 inches above average.
Stocker said the DNR does not have a general suggestion to remain off the water, but the Coast Guard says recreational boating is prohibited on the Mississippi River from Guttenberg to Bellevue due to high water.
Stocker stated that with higher river levels, trees, and debris that have been onshore for a long time are now part of the current.
“You maybe are seeing just a small log sticking above the water, but the entire tree is just below the surface,” she claimed. She emphasized that in some situations, there could be more than just trees beneath the surface.
“With all of the flooding, you also have buildings underneath the water…in Saylorville or [the] Coralville Reservoir…there might be orange buoys marking where that shower house was, where that fee station was.”
When floodwaters reach a certain level, many places close. Cedar Rapids’ Cedar River is closed at 13 feet or higher. It reached 9.8 feet in Cedar Rapids at 7:00 p.m. on July 3 as per KCRG.