LACROSSE, Wis. – The chance of Mississippi River spring flooding is in a low to normal range, the National Weather Service said in its first seasonal report. Nothing to worry about in the Upper Mississippi and tributaries for now, the report said.The winter has been dry with relatively low snowpack in upstate Wisconsin and Minnesota. More precise flood predictions will be possible when snow starts melting, said Weather Service hydrologist John Wetenkamp. Other variables, he said, are frost depth and whether soils are wet. Northeast Iowa and southwest Wisconsin may be a slightly higher risk because of much thicker snowpack. Another wild card, Wetenkamp noted, is recent extreme cold that could cause damming ice jams.
