Ring dikes, highways likely to close during flood

Partial dike closures are expected for 18 communities along the Red River Valley in Manitoba.

Flood officials gave an update on Friday about the preparations they expect to make as the high waters head north into Manitoba from North Dakota.

Highway75 is expected to be closed andborder crossings at Emerson and Gretna could be closed as well.

Officials on Thursday upped the flood risk for the province,citing the potentialfor the fourth-worst flood on record.The Red River could seelevels one foot higher than in 2009 from Emerson to Winnipeg.

But even with those warnings, Emergency Measures Minister Steve Ashton said flood forecasting is like a guessing game.

"But an educated guess," he told reporters on Thursday.

Forecaster Phillip Mutulusaid it depends on the melt, precipitation, the temperature and other factors.

But all of those factors are becoming much more of a challenge to predict as a result ofclimate change, Ashton added.

"We're writing new history pretty well every flood,"Ashton said.

'Unfortunate choice of words'

Jay Doering, a water resources engineering expert at the University of Manitoba, was not overly impressed with Ashton's description of flood forecasting.

"I think it's an unfortunate choice of words," he said Friday.

"I'm hoping he's referring to the guessing of having to predict weather patterns, because hydrology has worked very hard over many decades to become a science."

Doering said plugging the right information into the right model, with the right expertise, can result in accurate predictions.

On Friday, Ashton stood by his choice of words but also defended Manitoba's expertise in forecasting floods.

"They take the best science availablethat's the educated part of it and basically they put it in place to try and give some sense of what might happen in the future," he said.

The minister also defended the province's move to inform Manitobans about flooding possibilities,even though some have accused officials of causing unnecessary panic.

"I know back in the 2011 flood, early on, there was some concern that we were over-preparing for the flood. Our sense is you can never be over-prepared," Ashton said.