Last week, air crews and ground teams from North and South Dakota Civil Air Patrol were busy searching for a missing aircraft that departed Aberdeen late at night in less than perfect weather. An interview with a family member indicated that the pilot, alone in a Cessna 172 aircraft, might be headed for Oakes, North Dakota. The story had a sad ending as the aircraft wreckage was found about 7 miles north of Aberdeen, the pilot did not survive. That, however, is not what today’s Cellpic Sunday photo is about.

I was on a flight crew dispatched from Fargo to search in the vicinity of Oakes located in the southeastern part of North Dakota. While we searched a 15 x 20 mile (24 x 32 km) area, I couldn’t help but notice the areas of flooding in the James River valley near Oakes. If you look carefully in the center of the photo, you can see the two winding parallel tracks of the river bed. In the sections of land here, the river is well out of its banks. It’s not uncommon to see larger areas of overland flooding in the spring. It’s another matter to see this much flooding late in the fall. When the ground is saturated like this in the fall, the spring snow melt won’t be absorbed into the ground and the area of flooding will be much more widely spread. North Dakota has several rivers that are approaching or above flood stage right now. If the rivers don’t recede back into their banks before the winter freeze, we can expect some serious flooding in the spring.

About the photo. This image is looking south. The city of Oakes is just visible in the upper left of the photo, the James River passing the city on the west side of town. I captured the image with my Samsung S7 cell phone, processed it in Adobe Lightroom and Luminar Flex. Most browsers will give you a better look at the image if you select it to enlarge. The rule for Cellpic Sunday is simple. The image must be captured on a mobile device.

John Steiner