Byron Dorgan: “a couple of my colleagues this morning have spoken, as I did yesterday, about the devastating blizzards and floods that…”

“a couple of my colleagues this morning have spoken, as I did yesterday, about the devastating blizzards and floods that have confronted people in North and South Dakota and the Minnesota region in recent days. I suppose only those who have been there can fully understand the dimension of the tragedy. It is, indeed, a tragedy. North Dakota has had the toughest winter that it has ever had, with five and six major blizzards, closing down virtually all roads, including the interstate highways, causing serious problems. On top of that, with the expected floods that would come as a result of the record amount of snowfall from these previous blizzards, last week something called the grandfather of all blizzards came to North Dakota. Leon Osborne, who works at the University of North Dakota and is someone who runs a weather service that I think is tops in our region, described this blizzard as the worst in 50 years in our State. This blizzard came on top of all of the other blizzards and on top of the flooding that was already beginning in our State. The snowfall last weekend ranged anywhere from 12 inches to over 20 inches of snowfall with winds 40 and 50 miles an hour in some parts of North Dakota. The picture of North Dakotans trying to fill sandbags in the middle of a snow blizzard is quite extraordinary. The Dakotans have had a very, very difficult time coping with these problems.”