They were prepared for the worst and hoping for the best, and in the end Saskatchewan escaped relatively unharmed from the spring melt.
The worst is now over in a year that saw almost a third of the province under the threat of moderate to severe flooding.
Patrick Boyle with the Water Security Agency says it will take some time before everything is back to normal but water levels have peaked and are now on their way down.
“Over all, the major systems, tributaries, creeks, things like that feed into the major systems, it has definitely subsided and is going down,” he says.
There are still 15 communities, including six First Nations, that are under a state of emergency but for the most part the communities are in recovery mode.
Duane Mckay, the commissioner of emergency management, says province wide 42 people have been evacuated from their homes.
He says the main issue has been road access.
On the James Smith First Nation, south of Nipawin, crews are doing what they can to keep the access road open.
Right now you need a four-by-four vehicle to get in or out.
“The road is still a very difficult situation for us, they have machinery in there and they are turning the top of the road over to try and dry it out,” McKay says.
Wildfires are the next major threat for emergency crews – there are 10 burning right now.
Last night, firefighters battled two of them on the Yellow Quill First Nation, north of Wynyard.
Mckay says the threat of wildfires is about to get much worse.
“We expect high winds in the next couple of days until this new front moves through, which could see some winds in the southern areas gusting from 90 to 100 kilometers an hour, which is not a good situation at all,” he says.
Flooded highways are also still a problem.
There are 17 highways that have water on them and six are closed.
This includes Hwy 2, just south of the junction with Hwy 11, near Chamberlain.