Just in case you thought you might find a way to hop a flight with a pilot friend and get your own birds-eye view of the flooding situation, I thought I’d pass along this little tidbit: Bismarck-Mandan is a no fly zone for air traffic below 5000 ft MSL, shown in the red area above.

The FAA put out NOTAM (Notice To AirMen) 1/6326 on June 5th with very specific instructions that really don’t leave local pilots much room. My guess is that they fear that the same bunch of lookey-loo gapers that caused traffic jams from one end of the metro area to the other will find a way to take to the air, and that causes a hazardous situation over an area where a rescue is a near-certain impossibility.

Oh yeah…right before that they issued NOTAM 1/6325, which declares the same sort of thing around Garrison Dam. So if you thought it’d be really keen to hop in a puddle-jumper and do some circles around the dam to satisfy your curiosity, guess again!

You can find the two NOTAM bulletins on the FAA website here:

FAA NOTAM 1/6326 (Bismarck-Mandan)

FAA NOTAM 1/6325 (Garrison Dam)