Kent Conrad: “I rise again today to report to my colleagues on the developing disaster in the State of North Dakota. As I reported to…”

“I rise again today to report to my colleagues on the developing disaster in the State of North Dakota. As I reported to my colleagues yesterday, we were hit last weekend with the most powerful winter storm in over 50 years. We are a State that is accustomed to tough storms. But, frankly, we have never seen one quite like this. Mr. President, this storm came on top of the worst flooding threat in 150 years. So we have a double whammy of a powerful winter storm, dumping record amounts of snowfall, in addition to an underlying threat of massive flooding, because before this storm hit North Dakota, we were faced with a record snowfall in the State of North Dakota, over 100 inches of snow, before we got dumped on with another anywhere from 17 to 24 inches in the eastern part of our State. As the paper of my hometown reported, "A Doozy of a Record"--record snowfall they are talking about. It is maybe hard to see on the chart here. But what they are showing is a major shopping center. These are cars, or I guess more accurately they are the tops of cars. That is how deep the snow was in my hometown. That is not the only place that has been hit. It is across the State of North Dakota. This is from the largest city in our State, Fargo, ND. The headline there is "The Worst of Two Seasons." They are talking about the blizzard on top of the flood. Mr. President, this is a truly staggering set of circumstances that the people of my State are having to cope with.”