 The Minnesota Department of Transportation recently issued a warning advising residents throughout central Minnesota to expect water and flooding on area roadways. The amount of water on the roads has been especially high this year due to a combination of historic snowfall, heavy rain and ice plugging storm drains and culverts causing water to back up onto the roads. In this city of Brainerd, there are 2,500 catch basins that the city workers have been busy trying to free from ice. We have our street crews right now out trying to uncover catch basins so that the rain has somewhere to go so we don't have these possible flooding incidents or localized flooding you know. So that's kind of what our street crews are working on right now and trying to scrape the ice off of the streets because it is very rough right now on a lot of our side streets. The consistent heavy snowfall and the frequency of the snow events that the area has seen this winter has caused streets to get narrower and narrower making it difficult for crews to remove snow on side streets. If a localized flooding issue arises the public is advised to call City Hall. This is kind of the worst of both worlds because of all the snow and the inch inch and a half of rain it's making things melt you know a lot faster. We just really didn't have a lot of time to take a step back and start removing some of the snow from the edges of the street to uncover the catch basins and keep them clear and now with rain and warmer temperatures we're starting to see a lot more ponding in the streets. The City advises motorists to be cautious and to drive slow through any type of water on area roadways. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News please consider making a tax deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.