Flood waters set new record

Lake Monroe reached record levels Wednesday as runoff from the week's heavy rains caused the already-swollen lake to rise even higher. For the first time in the dam's 37-year history, water levels rose high enough to reach the emergency spillway, designed to handle overflow from the dam.\nWater began trickling over the concrete barrier into the grassy spillway late Tuesday afternoon, and continued into Wednesday. By 9:30 a.m. Wednesday morning, the lake had reached 556.22 feet, the highest official level ever recorded. The previous record for the lake was 554.96 feet, set on May 17, 1996.\nTuesday night, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers eased the dam's release rate up to 2200 cubic feet per second by late tonight, meeting the maximum normal release rate for the dam.\nSteve Rager, the district emergency manager for the corps, assured that the dam is doing its job.\n"We have it timed right now so the release will not create any additional flooding downstream," he said. "We may prolong, but we will not create."\nThe lake is normally maintained at two different levels, depending on the season.\n"We have a normal pool that we try to maintain in the summer and in the winter," Rager said. "We keep the winter pool lower so we can store more water when the spring floods come."\nThrough the first half of May, Bloomington has seen 7.4 inches of rain -- which is a pace that could shatter the previous record of 10.1 inches set in 1943.\n"The dam certainly has reached capacity storage," said John Fleshman of the public affairs office for the corps.\nThe massive amounts of rain have caused the National Weather Service to issue flood statements and warnings across Indiana. Neighboring counties Greene, Jackson, Lawrence, Morgan, Owen and Jackson were under flood statements Wednesday afternoon. But clear skies on Tuesday and Wednesday brought hopes of receding waters. \nThe rain might be back soon enough, though. The National Weather Service office in Indianapolis is predicting an 80 percent chance of thunderstorms on Thursday and a 50 percent chance of rain on Friday. If more rain moves into the already-soggy central Indiana, the receding floodwaters could rise again.\n"If more rain comes in, all bets are off," Rager said.