A deep snowpack in the mountains has weather-watchers wary of springtime flooding.
“The ingredients are there,” said Tom Browning, chief of the Colorado Water Conservation Board’s flood-mitigation section.
“If everything lined up just perfectly, and we had the right mixture of temperatures and weather,” Browning said, “we could have trouble.”
State officials say it’s still too early to predict the runoff levels that typically crest in late May and early June.
A state flood task force is scheduled to discuss the potential for stream flooding at a meeting today in Denver.
Although some parts of the mountains have snow piled up at 150 percent of average, the biggest determining factor will be how quickly and consistently temperatures climb.
A warm March in the southwestern part of the state has diminished the flood danger there, while a particularly snowy month has raised the hazards in the northern mountains, said Mike Gillespie, the snow-survey supervisor for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.
Some mountain communities are stockpiling sandbags and other emergency supplies in case streams overflow, and officials are reminding property owners that they must have federal flood insurance at least 30 days before it becomes effective.
But no one knows if these precautions will be necessary.
“In past years, we’ve had floods where the snowpacks have been even lower than they are now,” Browning said. “But there are also times when the snowpack has been even higher than we have right now, and we had no flooding.”
Steve Lipsher: 970-513-9495 or slipsher@denverpost.com.
