30 Years ago How many of you remember the floods of the 1990s? - The decade of flooding...
The middle 90s was supposed to be the next 20-year drought cycle (middle 30s, middle 50s, middle 70s) but Mother Nature had other ideas...it started in 1990 and for the next 10 years we had major flooding nearly every year with rain fall amounts of 3 to 5 inches being common and some springs having 2 or more of these events.
July 8, 1993, was the biggie - we received 8 to 10 inches in Manning and just north.
This was part of a system that started in Nebraska and continued on through Iowa and out east.
We had several floods earlier in the spring culminating in this 500-year flood and also followed by another lesser flood in August.
The rains started falling early in the evening and continued through much of the night, so I wasn't able to get any pictures.
Fortunately Bob Genzen took several pictures off of the trestle bridge the next morning and while the high-water levels had receded there were lots of water mark levels left behind.
In this picture you can see the flood line which was half way up on the doors of the Manning Livestock Auction building just south of the Trestle Bridge.
The marker I remember is that the water level reached into the first section of the railing on the west bridge on our bottom road - I know this because there were old corn stalks, trash, and residue hanging on that section of railing - which is the north edge of Manning.
We haven't had any major flooding for many years now and based on history, one of these years we'll get back to the typical spring floods which have occured on and off over the last 100+ years of records and also old pictures I have.

Early morning of July 8, 1993 flood
The red arrow points to the shore line of the flood high point.