What a difference a month can make.
Fremont City Administrator Brian Newton and Fremont Mayor Joey Spellerberg went on an aerial tour of the flooding in Dodge County on Thursday afternoon.
Newton said that conditions have improved from last month when the pair also viewed the conditions from the air.
“We looked at it before the cold snap about four weeks ago, right about the time it started flooding the first time,” Newton said. “We went up and looked at it and the ice jam was long. It is hard to tell from the air, but I think it was close to a mile-long last time and now it is about a quarter-of-a-mile.”
A narrow passageway by Hormel Park has played a role in the flooding.
“I’m certainly not a hydraulic engineer, but I don’t know how many I’ve talked with said that we had a bottleneck,” Newton said. “That is what I would call it right there.”
Newton said there were no other troubled areas.
“I think it is wide open to the east and the west,” he said. “It is only that little plug that is causing the flooding. We went almost to Schuyler and there was no ice at all. There is some frozen stuff on sand bars, but no floating ice whatsoever.”
The water conditions had improved southwest of the city this morning, officials said. That is a welcomed relief for area residents who suffered through the flooding of two years ago.
“People are really sensitive from 2019 and rightfully so,” Newton said. “It was a triple whammy that year with conditions we just hadn’t seen. We had at least two feet of frost in the ground, a couple of feet of snow and then we had rain. When it rained, all the water couldn’t soak into the ground and down the river it came. The conditions haven’t been the same this year.”
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