John Wheeler: The Red River's flow rate is likely to slow down in the future

FARGO — The Red River flows northward at a very slow rate and that rate is destined to slow even more in the future. At the peak of the last glaciation, some 18,000 years ago, ice covered our region to a depth of at least 2,000 or 3,000 feet. All that weight greatly compressed the land, causing it to sink.

As the glaciers began to recede from our region starting about 13,000 years ago, that weight was removed, causing the land to rebound. Recent measurements have shown the land near Hudson Bay to be rising about a half-inch per year. Because the glaciers left our region sooner, the land around here has stopped rising.



This means that the slope of the land from here to Hudson Bay is slowly decreasing, a process that will likely cause the Red River of the North to flow even slower and eventually stop flowing northward at all in a few thousand years..