The Red River of the North has a peculiarity that shapes every spring in the valley it drains: it flows north. Its headwaters thaw and swell before its downstream reaches, still locked in ice, are ready to receive the water. The result is a river that can back up against its own frozen mouth, spreading out across one of the flattest landscapes on the continent in a broad and stubborn flood.

A River That Thaws Backward

The flatness is the flood's ally. With almost no slope to carry the water away, a rising Red spreads for miles across the valley, threatening the cities and farms strung along it. Fargo and its neighbors have fought the spring flood for generations with sandbag lines, dikes, and enormous volunteer efforts that turn whole communities out to the riverbank.

From the almanac's reckoning:

• The Red River of the North flows toward a downstream that thaws later.
• The valley's extreme flatness spreads the floodwater for miles.
• Sandbag lines and diversions defend the valley cities each spring.

Great diversion projects now aim to spare the largest cities the worst of it, but the flat valley will always be flood country in the spring. The almanac counts the northward flood of the Red among the plains' defining seasonal dramas — the price the valley pays for its wondrous flat black soil.