A Minnesota family who lost their home in the floods is vowing to keep the store open

The Rapidan Dam Store remained standing Wednesday, but after the house where its owners, Jenny Barnes and her brother David Hruska, grew up, washed into the Blue Earth River near Mankato the day before, they’re not sure what’s next.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen,” said a post on the store’s Facebook page Wednesday night, adding that it was a difficult experience. “The Dam Store hasn’t sold its last burger or its last slice of pie.”

That home’s disappearance from the river and hundreds of flood-damaged or destroyed homes elsewhere in the upper Midwest are among the first structural casualties of the severe weather that has hit the region as floodwaters move south.

The road through Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota and Minnesota has been flooded due to heavy rains since last week, and is also suffering from a severe heat wave. Up to 18 inches (46 cm) of rain fell in some areas, pushing some rivers to record levels. Hundreds of people have been rescued and at least two people have died after driving through flooded areas.

In Iowa, more cities were expecting flooding. The West Fork of the Des Moines River was expected to crest at about 5.1 feet in Humboldt Thursday night. About 200 homes and 60 businesses in Humboldt could be affected, officials said.

In the coming days, Nebraska and northwest Missouri are expected to begin seeing downstream effects of flooding. Many streams and rivers may not overflow until the end of this week. The Missouri River will crest in Omaha on Thursday, said Kevin Low, a National Weather Service forecaster.

Some of the best photos have been of floodwaters surrounding a Minnesota dam.

Jessica Keech and her 11-year-old son watched part of a house near a dam fall into the river Tuesday night. They used to visit this place to see the dam and enjoy a pie from the Dam Store.

“It just absorbed it in the water. He literally just disappeared,” said Keech, who is from nearby New Ulm.

Blue Earth County officials said Wednesday that the river had washed too deep into the shoreline, and they were concerned about the integrity of a nearby bridge over the river. After the floodwaters recede, the county must decide whether to repair the dam or remove it — with both options costing millions of dollars.

President Joe Biden spoke by phone with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to discuss the impact of the Rapidan dam and the Federal Emergency Management Agency has arrived in Minnesota, White House officials said.

Preliminary information from the National Weather Service shows that recent flooding has brought record river levels to more than a dozen locations in South Dakota and Iowa, surpassing previous locations by an average of 3.5 feet (1 meter).

In southeastern South Dakota, residents of Canton were cleaning up after receiving 18 to 20 inches (46 to 51 centimeters) of rain in just 36 hours last week. A stream on the side of the 20 hectares (8 acres) of Lori Lems and her husband overflowed the playground they had built for their grandchildren in their backyard.

Lems, a 62-year-old former shopkeeper and wedding venue owner, said he has lived in the town of 3,200 all his life and has never seen rain as heavy as last week.

He said: “We felt like we were in the middle of a rain storm. “It was just unbelievable.”

Farther south, in North Sioux City, South Dakota, floodwaters toppled poles and trees, and some homes were washed off their foundations. There was no water, sewer, gas or electrical services in the area, Union County Emergency Management said Tuesday in a Facebook post.

In the Sioux City, Iowa, area, water spilled over the Big Sioux River levee, damaging hundreds of homes, officials estimate. And the local wastewater treatment plant is so overwhelmed that officials say it must dump about a million gallons (3.8 million liters) of untreated sewage a day into the Missouri River.

Several roads were closed due to flooding, including Interstates 29 and 680 in Iowa near the Nebraska line.