The City of Fort Collins is drying out today after nearly five inches of rain caused flash flooding in some areas Thursday night.
“It’s pretty damp up here,” said Patty Bigner, spokeswoman for the Fort Collins utility department. “We’re doing well but they’re predicting more rain for this afternoon.”
The heaviest rain fell in the southern part of the city, causing Fossil Creek to overflow its banks and flood streets, yards and a few basements in the Paragon Point neighborhood. Some residents of the Parkland Mobile Home Park had to flee to higher ground.
The rain fell hard from about 7 to 10 p.m., Bigner said. The National Weather Service reported the rain storms moved east from there, causing minor flooding in Weld County and in the city of Greeley. The storms broke up in that area. Phillips and Sedgewick counties, near the Kansas and Nebraska borders, didn’t receive any rain at all.
Minor flooding also occurred in southwest Denver and Lakewood.
The Fort Collins floods came exactly 10 years after some of the heaviest flooding in the city’s history.
Mike Gavin, Fort Collins’ emergency manager, said eight to 10 families in the Parklane Mobile Home Park on South Court Street were evacuated as water rose to several feet in the park.
“There’s enough that it’s up to the headlights of cars parked in some of the driveways,” he said.
Electricity to those trailers was shut off as a precaution. Bigner said minor outages occurred in the area.
Bigner also said emergency personnel blocked some flooded intersections, and the city used its reverse 911 system to tell residents not to drive through any flooded streets.
Rescue crews helped people in stalled vehicles in intersections, Gavin said. There were no injuries reported.
“Basically the fire department went in and helped get the vehicles out of the intersection,” he said.
The flooding was severe in the Paragon Point and Stanton Creek subdivisions on the city’s southeast side, Bigner said. The city warned people in areas experiencing flooding should stay out of basements and move to upper levels, she said.
Some neighborhoods reported power outages and downed power lines from the storm.
Jim Kalina, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Boulder, said up to 5 inches of rain was reported on the city’s southwestern side, with most parts of the city reporting at least 2 or 3 inches.
Kalina said the heavy rain moved east of Fort Collins, as the system weakened. He said another storm dropped heavy rain south of Greeley.
A cold front that brought loads of moisture into the state Thursday, along with seasonal monsoonal flow and day-time heating produced the large storms, he said. The moisture will stick around today.
“It looks like we could get some heavy rain,” he said. “It could develop somewhere, but it’s hard to say where.”
Staff writer John Ingold can be reached at 720-929-0898 or jingold@denverpost.com.
