Flooding of the Red River, 1997

Flooding on the Red River in April and May 1997 set twentieth-century records at most locations along the Minnesota–North Dakota border and into Manitoba, Canada. At the time, it was the eighth-costliest flood in US history, causing an estimated $4 billion in damages across a swath of land roughly the size of Delaware.

After an exceptionally rainy autumn in 1996, several cities along the Red River experienced as many as eight blizzards that winter, which created a ten-to-thirteen-inch pack of high-moisture snow in the southern part of the valley. On Valentine’s Day 1997, the first National Weather Service forecast for the Red River Valley warned of severe flooding. When temperatures rose, so did river levels from more than twice the average snowfall.

Grand Forks, where the local newspaper named the storms like hurricanes, saw six inches fall in Blizzard “Hannah” on April 4, 1997—the same day the river reached flood stage. Freezing rain knocked out power to more than 300,000 people across the valley.

Over the next two weeks, water continued to rise fast—sometimes as quickly as one foot per hour, far beyond flood-stage levels. Levees along the river, built to hold water back, were threatened. In the early hours of April 18, Grand Forks Mayor Pat Owens issued the first evacuation orders, with civil defense sirens sounding to wake sleeping residents. Ninety percent of the city’s 52,000 residents would be evacuated.

While flooding heavily damaged several communities along the river, including the towns of Breckenridge and Ada, Minnesota, focus remained on Grand Forks. The following day, a fire began downtown, eventually damaging or destroying eleven buildings across three city blocks. The lasting image of the flood was a raging fire atop flood waters.

On April 22, President Bill Clinton toured the area and visited victims and relief workers at Grand Force Air Force Base in Grand Forks, offering sympathy and announcing additional federal dollars for emergency response.

Flood waters started to recede in Grand Forks the day after Clinton visited. Within a month, the water was below flood stage, leaving destruction and a long clean-up across hundreds of miles of the Red River Valley.

East Grand Forks, Minnesota, a city of nearly 9,000 across the river from Grand Forks, North Dakota, ultimately reported damage to all houses except eight. By August, schools reopened—many in rented and temporary facilities, including churches and armories.

Federal relief funding initially deadlocked in Congress after a presidential veto, but more than $1 billion in funding for the Upper Midwest was finally approved on June 12. It included money to repair infrastructure and to buy and remove homes and businesses most at risk of future flooding.

More than 800 properties were purchased in Grand Forks alone through a voluntary buyout. Entire neighborhoods were removed in Grand Forks and East Grand Forks to make room for new levees, as part of a $409-million federally funded system. The result was the Greenway, nearly 2,200 acres of parks and other open space along the river intended to prevent structural damage and destruction in future floods (which is what happened when another severe flood hit in 2009).

In 2005, levees and a flood diversion channel were built to protect Breckenridge, Minnesota, and Wahpeton, North Dakota. The $45 million project prevented $165 million in flood damages between that year and 2025, according to estimates.

Fargo, North Dakota, and Moorhead, Minnesota, were “precariously close to being lost” in 1997. After another close call in 2009, efforts began to build a flood diversion channel to protect those cities. That project remains in progress as of 2025.

While more than $1 billion in flood-control projects has helped prevent the catastrophic damage sustained along the Red River in 1997, flooding remains a regular occurrence. More than half of the top ten floods recorded in Fargo and Grand Forks have happened in the past twenty years, according to former North Dakota state climatologist Adnan Akyüz.