Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Lake Flooding And Synoptic Weather-Type Frequency At Devils Lake, North Dakota, Usa, Between 1965 And 2010, Paul E. Todhunter, Emily A. Knish

Geography & Geographic Information Science Faculty Publications

Since the spring of 1993, the water surface elevation at Devils Lake, a terminal lake in eastern North Dakota, USA, has risen by 8.8 m, producing more than 1 billion USD in direct flood damages. We examine the relationship between weather-type frequencies at Bismarck, North Dakota, and lake volume changes from 1965 to 2010 using the Spatial Synoptic Classification (SSC) system. First, we find statistically significant changes in the frequency of selected weather types over both annual and seasonal time periods. This indicates a trend toward in - creased advection of more humid weather types that is consistent with the …