Could Streams Overflow?

By: Stacey Kaiser

After last week’s snowstorm, Newschannel 13 spoke with emergency management officials to find out if there was fear of flooding with the snowmelt. They said they were not worried, but since then, we have had even more rain. But even after Tuesday’s rain event, Colorado Springs Emergency Manager Ed Breece says the water levels are okay. But it’s something they will have to keep a close eye on, especially this time of year.

“We start to get these types of situations where we have continued rain, the ground is already saturated, the water runs off into the streams and they start to raise,” said Breece.

Snowmelt after last week’s storm had stream levels peaking at 90%. Streams receded this week, but peaked at 90% again after Tuesday’s rainstorm. This still doesn’t have emergency management worried.

“Right now, as far as our stream gauge levels, we’re probably at about the 90% level, but if you look at the amount of flow, it’s about a half to a third of what it was in 1999.

The flow at Fountain Creek right now is 636 cubic feet per second. During the floods in 1999, the flow was 1,930 cubic feet per second. If we got another heavy rainstorm in the next couple of days, we could see some flooding. But as long as the river has time to recede like it did after last week’s snowstorm, then we should not run into any problems.