Heavy Rains Cause Flooding of Popular Attraction in Southern MN

When you hear the word harmony, you probably think of peace and everyone living calm lives, right?

Harmony is also the name of a small town on the Minnesota/Iowa border.  Harmony is known for their annual haunted house which is a fundraiser for the school band.  The haunted house has a new theme every year, and has been very popular Halloween attraction.

The other thing that is in the Harmony area is an underground attraction.  Niagara Cave is a very cool cave that is open through October.  It's a great tour of what some things look like underground, and has some great rock formations as well as some running water throughout the cave.

The cave is about 200 feet underground.  People going to take the tour of the cave will need to go down about 550 steps.  Thoughts would be that you also have to go up that amount of stairs in order to get out of the cave after the tour.

This is a look at what it looks like to take a tour through the cave on a "normal" day.

This past weekend, Southern Minnesota was blasted with a ton of rain.  Some areas received almost 9 inches of rain within a 3 day period.  That's more than average for an entire month.

As expected, rain like that will cause flash flooding in some low-lying areas.  One of those areas would be some underground features.  That would include Niagara Cave.

“Usually, everyone gets to go down to the waterfall, and today we can't,” said Aaron Bishop, whose family has long owned the cave.

The cave flooded with about 60 feet of water.  This is a look at what it looked like right after the weekend from KARE 11.  

The bright side is that the flood waters should recede almost as quickly as they came in.  The owners of Niagara Cave expect to be fully open again to tourists by Tuesday (today) or Wednesday.

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