Flood plain pains

When ice jammed the Yellowstone River near Miles City late in the winter of 2009, water backed up with alarming speed on its tributary, the Tongue. Mayor Joe Whalen worried that it could be the year flood water would defeat the levee."The ice was so thick and the ice jam was so close to town," he said. It had clogged the river about 70 yards east of the Highway 59 Bridge, not far from where the Tongue enters the Yellowstone on the city's southwest edge.