Weather condition increase flooding concerns
Intermittent snow is part of the problem causing runoff around town.
City officials, neighbors, and yes, the newspaper office were flooded (no pun intended) with calls about the water running down 1st West last week. Some were convinced that a water main had burst, leading to the increasingly deep channel of water that made driveways inaccessible briefly on Thursday, and created a mess in the roadway.
City officials were on notice once the water started running, and worked throughout the end of the week to mitigate the issue as much as possible.
According to City Superintendent Tyler Webster, the cause of the flooding was the snow/thaw conditions that created ideal conditions for the melting snow to channel into the shoulder of the road near the top of 1st west.
“The water is runoff from the field north of 700 North on the East side of 100 W. This has happened quite often—often enough that Dale Hobson placed 3 inch rock down 100 W from 500 N down toward 400 N,” Webster said.
“I think the reason this year is much worse is our weather pattern—warm, then low freezing temperatures and warm snowy/wet conditions that turns off the warm. The warmer weather melts the snow but the ground is frozen so no water is getting into the ground. This causes a large amount of water for runoff.”
The weather cycle can also allow the ground to become maximally saturated, as the soil becomes soft enough to absorb melting moisture, which is then locked in when it freezes. The ice layer also creates an especially frictionless medium on top of which melting snow heads downhill quickly.
At the end of last week, the city crew worked to “get the residents’ driveways accessible.” This week, the city has plans to repair the damaged roadway with rock and roadbase.
The conditions that led to this (and the familiar annual flooding in general) are predicted to continue for the next weeks, with another freeze/thaw cycle currently in the forecast for the end of this week.
We will update you when sandbags and other mitigation items are available from the county, as they have been during past years’ flooding.
