If rain keeps falling and the St. Croix River keeps rising, downtown Stillwater could be looking at a Top 10 flood event next week.

According to the National Weather Service, the river is forecast to hit flood stage – 687 feet – on Thursday, and reach 687.6 feet on June 28, but those numbers could be higher depending on how much rain the area receives through next week.

“At this point, the forecast is getting close to being a significant event,” said Stillwater Mayor Ted Kozlowski.

The river’s 10th highest flood – 687.63 feet – was on June 27, 2014; the record flood was 694.1 feet on April 18, 1965, according to NWS records.

“688 puts us in the top 10,” Kozlowski said. “What’s weird about flooding is it’s about inches. If it hits 694, we’re screwed, but if it’s 691, it’s fine. We’re always right on the edge of it, and we never know how much rain we’re going to get next.

“Right now, we’ve got a pretty good handle on it, but if we get three inches in the next 10 days, things are going to look very difficult downtown,” he said.

City workers Owen Weadge, left, and Charlie Anderson add sandbags to a flood wall in Lowell Park as the rain-swollen St. Croix River slowly overflows its banks in downtown Stillwater, Friday, June 21, 2024. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Barriers, sandbags, emergency meeting

City crews on Friday were installing jersey barriers, building a berm and putting sandbags in place on the north side of Lowell Park, the lowest side of the park, said Shawn Sanders, director of the city’s public works department.

Volunteer sandbaggers are not needed at this time, and likely won’t be needed if the river “stays at this elevation,” he said.

“I’m guessing the crest will be Sunday the 30th or Monday the 1st at this point,” Sanders said. “That could change if there is still precipitation they are accounting for.”

City officials on Friday met in an emergency meeting at Stillwater City Hall to declare the city in a state of emergency, but “it’s not as dramatic as it sounds,” Kozlowski said.

The declaration enables city staff to purchase equipment needed to fight the flood without council approval and enables them to apply for federal and state money, if needed, to help with clean-up, Kozlowski said.

Lowell Park, the park on the St. Croix River in downtown Stillwater, is closed, as are the city-owned parking lots near the park. Shortly after 1 p.m. Friday, Minnesota Department of Transportation crews closed the Stillwater Lift Bridge to walkers and bicyclists.

Workers with the Minnesota Department of Transportation move barricades into place as they close the Stillwater Lift Bridge as the rain-swollen St. Croix River slowly overflows its banks in downtown Stillwater, Friday, June 21, 2024. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Crews placed concrete barriers on the non-lift sections of the bridge to act as ballast and raised the lift span approximately 15 feet above the bridge deck to protect the bridge from the rising water. The ballast serves to prevent possible movement of the structure due to flood waters, MnDOT officials said.

Boats with a height less than 15 feet will still be allowed to pass beneath the bridge while the lift span is raised, officials said.

Once flood waters recede, the span will be lowered, ballast will be removed and pedestrian and bicycle traffic can again cross the St. Croix River on the Loop Trail, MnDOT officials said. MnDOT also will resume the regular lift bridge schedule for marine traffic.

Forecast

The flood forecast does not take future precipitation into account outside of the next 48 hours, said Brent Hewett, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Chanhassen.

“Obviously, any additional rainfall next week could cause the rises to increase in speed and flood stage,” Hewett said.

More rain is in the forecast, Hewett said, including another 1 to 2 inches in the Stillwater area this weekend. “The heaviest rainfall has shifted south, so that’s good news,” he said. “It now looks like it will fall over northern Iowa.”

The forecast calls for sun on Sunday, then another round of rainfall on Monday evening into Tuesday morning, according to Hewett.

“It does look like we could be drier Wednesday through Friday next week, and then more rain possibly the following weekend,” Hewett said.

Kozlowski said he’s sleeping with his bedroom window open to monitor any potential rainfall himself.

“Forecasting has been all over the place. Paul Huttner is my guy, but even he’s having a hard time,” he said, referring to the MPR News chief meteorologist and “Climate Cast” host.

St. Paul

The road leading to the St. Paul Yacht Club office at Harriet Island Regional Park in St. Paul is closed due to high water levels on Friday, June 21, 2024.  (Devanie Andre / Pioneer Press)

Due to large amounts of rainfall expected in the coming days, St. Paul plans to close Shepard and Warner Road for 3.2 miles between Eagle Parkway and U.S. Highway 61  beginning at 6 p.m. on Sunday. The one way street segments that normally connect to Shepard Road will be temporarily converted to two-way traffic open only to access the buildings.

Second Street from Kellogg Boulevard to Sibley Street will be closed and Sibley Street and Jackson Street between Kellogg Boulevard and Second Street will be closed to through traffic.

Bundles of traffic cones surrounding road closed signs are sprinkled down Shepard Road and Warner Road in St. Paul on Friday, June 21, 2024.  (Devanie Andre / Pioneer Press)

The current forecast shows the river reaching 20 feet by June 27 which puts the level at major flood stage, according to a spokesperson from the city of St. Paul’s Public Works.

As part of the city’s standard flood response, they are in contact with the property and business owners along the river who might be impacted. The city’s homeless response team also is working with any unsheltered individuals or those in encampments that might be in the areas prone to flooding.

Harriet Island Regional Park will be closed to vehicle traffic and Raspberry Island will close beginning on Sunday, including Wigington Pavilion and the public boat launch.

St. Paul encourages community members to visit stpaul.gov/flood to stay up to date on the latest information on closures.

Fort Snelling State Park

With the expectation that the rising Mississippi and Minnesota rivers will flood the roads and parking lots, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources announced Friday it will be closing Fort Snelling State Park beginning at 10 p.m. Saturday.

The DNR said the park will remain closed until flood waters “recede and the DNR is able to assess the conditions of facilities and amenities and address any flood-related cleanup and repairs.”

Fort Snelling is the only state park the DNR is currently closing for flooding, but it has already closed some campgrounds, trails, roads and amenities across the state.

Underground mine tours at Lake Vermilion-Soudan Underground Mine State Park are also suspended due to water intrusion in the mine. Surface tours at the Soudan Mine will resume on Saturday. Bison tours at Blue Mounds State Park have been canceled for the weekend due to flooding in the park.

For updated information on DNR closures go to dnr.state.mn.us/trailconditions/index.html.

Road conditions

Travelers can check in with MnDOT’s website at 511mn.org for current conditions.

MnDOT spokesperson Anne Meyer said in an email to the Pioneer Press on Friday that the website is a “great tool for travelers to see the areas of impact due to heavy rain and flooding statewide.”

“We do have several highways that are closed due to flooding or damage, and information may change over the weekend,” Meyer wrote. “511mn.org will have those updates and will be helpful to drivers to plan ahead before their travels.”

Minneapolis

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, St. Paul District, announced Friday that it is closing Lower St. Anthony Falls Lock and Dam and Lock and Dam 1, in Minneapolis, to all recreational traffic until further notice due to high flows over 30,000 cubic feet per second.

Flows over this amount are considered unsafe, according to the Corps’ news release. Commercial traffic at these locks would be shut down at 40,000 cubic feet per second, the Corps said.

Northern Minnesota

Several small-town tourist meccas in northern Minnesota continued to be inundated by floodwaters after a deluge of rain earlier this week, prompting the closure of major roads and leaving a costly trail of damage.

On Friday, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz traveled to St. Louis County, where people in one town paddled through flood-ridden streets in small boats and local officials estimated the floods had caused at least $50 million in damage and prompted the closure of more than 40 roads.

At a news conference in Biwabik, Walz said he expected a presidential disaster declaration might be imminent, but the damage hadn’t yet reached the necessary threshold. Walz encouraged people to keep track of damage, which could help the state secure federal assistance.

“Especially in areas that don’t have a high population density, we’re going to need help,” Walz said. “There’s resources there. The rebuilding will happen.”

This report includes information from the Associated Press.

Related Articles

Here’s what you need to know about the MSRA’s Back to the Fifties Weekend

Lake Superior lighthouse back on the market after deal falls through

After plea withdrawal and subsequent conviction, man gets life for slaying on Iron Range trail

River floods in northeastern Minnesota community of Cook, submerging downtown

Judy Garland’s Minnesota hometown is raising funds to purchase stolen ‘Wizard of Oz’ ruby slippers

As one of 16 teams that missed the NHL playoffs this spring, the Wild were part of the draft lottery that can randomly improve a team’s pick. But nothing happened for Minnesota, which will carry the No. 13 overall pick into Las Vegas for next weekend’s draft.

That’s OK, said Judd Brackett, the Wild’s director of amateur scouting since 2020-21.

“We’ve identified players that I think we’d be thrilled with,” he said during a teleconference Friday. “Now, we’ll see how it unfolds.”

That last part is big, of course, because as Brackett noted, “the draft will be dictated to us a bit.” The reality is, Brackett and his staff will be hoping that 12 other teams pass on at least one player they really like.

The Wild’s scouting department has been working on its own mock drafts, and even contacting other teams ahead of them in the draft to set the groundwork for a potential trade if the opportunity presented itself.

That, however, while not impossible, is unlikely, Brackett said.

“Typically, if you’ve got one of the top 10 picks, you’ve done your homework, too, and there’s a player that you’re happy with,” he said. “Especially when, as we mentioned earlier, there’s some depth in this draft in the first round.”

About the only thing draft watchers seem to agree on is that Boston University center Macklin Celebrini will be picked first by San Jose. Even an apparent can’t-miss scorer like Ivan Dimidov — who would seem to be the consensus No. 2 pick — could fall because teams aren’t confident he won’t stay in Russia for several more years.

Among those Top 10 players any team would be happy with: OHL wing Beckett Sennecke, defensemen Artyom Levshunov (Michigan State) Anton Silayev (Russia) and Zeev Buium (University of Denver), and WHL center Cayden Lindstrom.

The Wild have been collecting centers, and have some good young ones to show for it, from Marco Rossi — who had 21 goals and played in 82 games as a rookie last season — to CHL prospects Riley Heidt and Hunter Haight, who just won a Memorial Cup with Saginaw, and rookie Marat Khusnutdinov.

Khusnutdinov and rising left wing Liam Ohgren are expected to make the club out of camp this fall, and there are some promising defensemen playing for the AHL club in Des Moines, including Ryan O’Rourke, David Spacek, Carson Lambos and Daemon Hunt.

There doesn’t appear to be urgency to fast track a player, and Brackett said the team has not focused on a particular position in this draft, which appears particularly deep on the blue line. One of those prospects, Zayne Parekh, might be of particular interest because he had 107 points in 79 total games playing with Haight last season in Saginaw.

“Our list is going to be different than 31 other teams’ (lists),” Brackett said. “So, even at 13, there is a chance” to get a player higher than 13 on Minnesota’s chart.

“We’ve got to sit there and patiently wait, and sometimes we get impatient and start calling teams ahead of us to see if we can get up here,” Brackett said. “But unless you have a dance partner, it’s hard to get there.”

Briefly

Last year’s top pick, Rosemount forward Charlie Stramel, has transferred to Michigan State, where he will be reunited with his national team coach, after a difficult sophomore season at Wisconsin (3 goals, 8 points). “We’re excited that he has this opportunity,” Brackett said. “He now has to grab it and make the most of it. But we’re still very happy with Charlie. … We know the player that he can be, and we’re going to provide all the resources that we can.”

A PLEASANT FALL?

Three high-end prospects that, according to several mock drafts, could be available when the Wild use their No. 13 pick Friday in the first round of the 2024 NHL entry draft at the Sphere in Las Vegas:

Konsta Helenius, C, Finland — Helenius, 18, has been a member of Finland’s international junior teams and last season scored 16 goals among 40 points in 57 games (regular and postseason) total points for Jukurit in Finland’s top professional league.

Zayne Parekh, D, OHL — Parekh, 18, scored 33 goals in 51 regular-season games, up from 21 in his first junior season. He and Wild center prospect Hunter Haight won the CHL’s Memorial Cup with the Spirit this spring.

Tij Iginla, C, WHL — Another center, this one the son of former Calgary nemesis, and Hockey Hall of Famer, Jarome Iginla. Only 17, he already is 6 feet and 185 pounds and scored 56 goals among 99 points in 75 regular season and postseason games for Kelowna this season.

Related Articles

Wild trade prospect Adam Beckman for AHL all-star Graeme Clarke

Wild release 2024-25 preseason schedule

Wild coach John Hynes will be U.S. assistant for 4-Nations Face-Off

Out as PWHL Minnesota GM, Natalie Darwitz proud of team she built and ‘championship we brought home’

PWHL Draft: Ken Klee and staff will make Minnesota’s picks after GM Natalie Darwitz’s dismissal

By MELISSA GOLDIN and ALI SWENSON (Associated Press)

NEW YORK (AP) — President Joe Biden’s simple act of sitting down while commemorating the 80th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, France, gained more attention than the ceremony itself in some circles as social media users shared a shortened version of the clip to falsely claim he was reaching for a nonexistent chair.

The clip was the first of at least three out-of-context or trimmed videos shared widely over less than two weeks in June to fuel a narrative that Biden is mentally and physically unfit for office.

It’s long been standard practice in politics to spin real moments to make an opponent look bad. Yet the recent spate of misleading videos — which amassed millions of views and were picked up by right-leaning outlets around the world — shows how the reach of social media and real concerns about Biden’s age have made the tactic especially powerful in 2024.

Experts say voters can expect to see both Republicans and Democrats weaponizing unflattering, out-of-context moments to label each other’s presidential candidates as weak, confused or senile — especially considering their ages of 81 and 78. Indeed, edited and misrepresented clips have also circulated about former President Donald Trump.

“Any misinformation that seems to reinforce or resonate perceptions or dominant narratives, whether they’re accurate or not, is very effective,” said Erik Nisbet, a professor at Northwestern University who studies media, public opinion and public policy in democracy and elections.

At the G7 summit in Italy, where Biden headed after Normandy, a clip of the president watching a skydiving demonstration was cropped to make it appear as though he wandered off for no reason. A wider view of the video shows he was greeting paratroopers who had just landed. And at a Los Angeles fundraiser last weekend, a pause by Biden as he left the stage amid cheers was used to say the president froze, while Biden’s campaign said he was only stopping to take in the applause.

The clips have been especially effective at activating concerns about Biden’s competency, according to Nisbet, because he is the oldest sitting president the U.S. has ever had, and he moves with more difficulty than he once did.

Dr. Kevin O’Connor, Biden’s physician, wrote in a February memo after the president’s annual physical that he “continues to be fit for duty” and that his stiff gait is the result of arthritic changes in his spine. He said that Biden has reported additional hip pain and started using a new device for his sleep apnea, but that he showed no signs of stroke, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s or other similar conditions.

After the fundraiser clip spread online, Biden campaign spokesperson James Singer blasted such negative characterizations as a tactic from those who “are so scared of losing to Joe Biden, they’ll make anything up” to distract voters from Trump’s misdeeds.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in a press briefing called the videos “cheap fakes,” a term for videos edited using cheap video editing software rather than artificial intelligence.

Trump’s campaign has doubled down on the clips and circulated a meme that defined a “cheap fake” as “any unedited video of Joe Biden’s cognitive decline that the Biden administration does not want the public to see.”

Experts say these attacks can be iterative, with social media influencers and campaigns piling on one another.

“The attention economy within conservative media helps perpetuate these cycles of circulation and these sorts of misinformation and campaign messaging,” said A.J. Bauer, an assistant professor at the University of Alabama who studies conservative news.

For example, the Republican National Committee posted a cropped version of the video of Biden at the G7 summit in Italy shortly after it happened, captioning the post, “What is Biden doing?” The RNC’s post was then shared by right-leaning media outlets — among them, Sinclair Broadcast Group syndicated stations and the New York Post, which embedded the RNC’s post in its story.

This clip was also picked up by publications abroad, including the tabloid The Sun in the U.K. and the newspaper Corriere della Sera in Italy. A pro-Trump super PAC highlighted the latter coverage on social media as proof that “the world is laughing at us.”

Joshua Tucker, a politics professor and co-director of the Center for Social Media and Politics at New York University, said that Republicans will likely run aggressively on concerns about Biden’s age, but they should expect Democrats to strike back at Trump, who is only a few years younger.

“Given some of Trump’s behavior of late, the RNC is playing with fire a little bit here,” Tucker said.

Biden’s campaign has begun reciprocating with attacks on Trump through its rapid response account on the social media platform X. On Thursday, it posted a montage of clips it claimed showed Trump “getting confused, lost, wandering off, and waving to nobody.”

The out-of-context post followed other left-wing efforts to use videos to paint Trump as confused, senile or attention seeking.

For example, social media users earlier this month used an image of Trump holding Donald Trump, Jr.’s hand at a rally last fall in Hialeah, Florida, as alleged proof that the former president needed to be escorted offstage. The original video captured the moment in full context, showing the father and son only briefly clasped hands in a greeting as Trump departed without help.

The fact that these images and videos have only simple edits or are misrepresented, rather than manipulated with editing software or artificial intelligence, gives them even more power in a moment when Americans are concerned about high-tech fakes, experts said.

“It’s persuasive because it’s not fabricated,” Nisbet said. “It’s simply distorted visual cues to create a false impression about what happened.”

At the debate next week — the first this cycle between the two leading candidates for president — both Trump and Biden will face pressure to show they remain healthy, sharp and fit to be president.

Both men have made public verbal gaffes, flubbing names, dates or facts. Health experts caution that such mix-ups can be common and exacerbated by stress. They also point out some cognitive aging is normal, including delay in memory retrieval. And Biden has fought a stutter since childhood, a challenge that critics have seized on to attack and ridicule him.

Experts agree that most voters are unlikely to switch candidates based on misleading videos, but they said such misinformation could further entrench people in their beliefs or dampen their enthusiasm to participate in the political process.

“This election will not be about persuasion,” said Nisbet. “It’s about mobilizing — the Democrats mobilizing Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters, Trump and Republicans doing the same. And it’s going to be a close election.”

___

Associated Press writer Stephen Groves in Washington contributed to this report.

___

The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.