MANKATO — In less than a day, the lower field area and parking lot at the dog park along Highway 169 flooded with three feet of moving water from the Minnesota River about 1/4 mile away.
On Tuesday, Kali Quotes brought her husky and two German shepherd mixes to the lower part of the park to run. Aside from a few muddy spots, the ground was dry. She came back on Wednesday, and she could barely see the top of the fence line of the lower park.
The river had flooded through the woods and the park, stopping at the embankment along the paved trail. “It was like, ‘Woah, what happened?’” said Quotes, who goes to the park almost every day. “Tuesday the snow was gone. It was actually dry.”
Thursday the water had risen about another foot. Another noticeable site was the deer droppings every few feet surrounding the top dog park area and along the trail, presumably from the deer pushed out of the flooded woods to higher ground.
The deer movement caused six deer-vehicle collisions Thursday between Mankato and St. Peter, said Minnesota Department of Transportation Highway Maintenance Supervisor Woody Woodruff. MnDOT is urging drivers to use caution on roads near rivers. “They’re moving to higher ground — and the higher ground is our roads,” Woodruff said.
Rebecca Arndt, MnDOT spokeswoman, said it’s unclear if or when Highway 169 might be closed due to flooding. She said the highway probably wouldn’t close Thursday, but that’s as far into the future as she could predict. “We’re watching, but we don’t know,” she said. “We will try and leave it open as long as we can. ... We will actually close lanes before we close the whole road.”
For the complete version of this story, see the Friday print edition of The Free Press.
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