Interesting images. A big change in just 13 days. Living in Des Moines in the early 70's, I do not recall much flooding at all. In the images, you can see what I believe is Saylorville Lake on the Des Moines River. This is an artificial lake they were completing and starting to fill up when I was there. There were a few dry spells in those years, and there was concern a few times when it was losing water before ever filling, disrupting the timetables of recreation businesses!

i grew up in des moines and left in 1980 -- but there never was flooding like this. the last major '100 year' flood was in 1993. this is a '500 year' flood. someone needs to recalculate their projections...

Those images really don't display a whole lot of information concerning the differences in river flow (before and after). The scale is too small to see any difference in river width.