I'd be really depressed if my garden was still under winter's siege. I assume the unprecedented floods are related to the unprecedented cold Siberia experienced earlier this year.

http://www.boston.com/dailynews/141/world/Water_rising_in_flooded_Siberi:.shtml

Water rising in flooded Siberian region

By Judith Ingram, Associated Press, 5/21/2001 07:31

MOSCOW (AP) Brown floodwaters submerged houses and cars in parts of the eastern Siberian city of Yakutsk on Monday as jets dropped bombs on an 18-mile ice jam clogging the Lena River and causing it to overflow its banks.

In Moscow, President Vladimir Putin opened his weekly meeting with Cabinet members with a discussion of the flooding.

Putin said ''the consequences of the floods are grave: Some 1,000 houses have been practically washed away,'' the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

Even though flooding occurs in the Lena River basin and other regions each spring, this year's flooding was unprecedented, Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu said.

''Russia has never had such devastating floods before,'' ITAR-Tass quoted Shoigu as saying.

Yakutsk, a city of close to 200,000, is the biggest settlement along the path of the flood-swollen river. The head of the Yakutia regional administration, Vasily Vlasov, told NTV television that the floodwaters were expected to crest in Yakutsk on Tuesday and that about two-fifths of the city risked inundation.

Emergency workers and student volunteers raced to reinforce dikes around the city with sand, said Viktor Beltsov, a spokesman for the Emergency Situations Ministry. Vlasov said emergency officials would work around the clock.

''There are enough personnel, there are enough explosives and helicopters, and therefore the main thing now is to work according to schedule,'' he said.

Some 580 people were moved out of Yakutsk on Monday morning, ITAR-Tass reported. About 3,580 had been evacuated beforehand from Yakutsk, the ministry said, along with about 42,000 people from other parts of the Yakutia region.

Others took refuge on the roofs of their houses, where some have erected small shacks and tents for sleeping. Emergency officials were distributing food and drinking water to residents of the region by boat.

Beltsov said that about 12 tons of explosives had been used Monday to break up the ice on the river near Yakutsk, located about 3,000 miles east of Moscow.

The ministry said that Lensk, a town of 26,000 that was flooded by the Lena last week, would require extensive reconstruction of 1,831 residential buildings, 247 miles of electric lines, 115 miles of roads, two bridges, seven health clinics and hospitals and 26 schools.

But Shoigu proposed that Lensk be rebuilt elsewhere, Interfax and ITAR-Tass reported.

-- Anonymous, May 21, 2001