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We want to hear from you. We have activated our beta comment board system while we are testing it. Please comment on the story and share your thoughts.SALT LAKE CITY — An extra cold, wet April has slammed the door on any hopes that northern Utah might slide into the next two months unaccompanied by flooding.
It's now not a matter of if, but when.
"Mother Nature is going to take us to the woodshed," said Randy Julander with the U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service's Snow Survey. "It's not too late to buy a pair of waders."
The bottom line is we had hoped for a hot, dry April -- one that would melt off the low elevation snow; it didn't happen.
–Randy Julander, US Snow Survey
#julander_quote
KSL meteorologist Dan Pope said the snow has not even begun to melt yet at the 9,000 foot level, and it is "like a keg ready to explode."
Another storm is due to hit Friday, and Pope says the weather models he's looked at do not show northern Utah shaking off the storminess until May 10.
"I am highly confident we will be flooding," Pope said Tuesday.
In northern Utah, snowpack has broken records at 15 to 20 sites where measurements are taken, Julander said, and this latest storm dumped a foot of new snow in the Wasatch and western Uinta mountains.
On Tuesday, Julander was happily cruising along on his snowmobile in Kamas Valley, where he'd just taken the latest measurements for the agency.
The impressive thing about this latest storm, he noted, is that it put down snow with a density similar to what snow lovers would expect to see in January and February.
"We have a brand new foot of an unbelievable kind of powder," he said.
Related:
Flood Watch River Flow Tracker
Keep track of water levels with KSL's exclusive Flood Watch 2011 River Flow Tracker.#flood_watch
That water content of the snow pack is on average 5 to 10 inches more than what was logged in 1983, the notorious flooding year that turned State Street and North Temple into rivers and caused millions upon millions in damage.
Julander said the problem is that April failed to behave in an ideal fashion to minimize flooding.
"The bottom line is we had hoped for a hot, dry April — one that would melt off the low elevation snow; it didn't happen."
If it had, snow melt would have been served to the creeks, streams and rivers like a fine, five-course meal, Julander said, explaining that the northern part of the state could have stomached the erosion of an abnormally high snow pack.
Instead, Julander said, "What we're getting right here is Bubba's all-you-can-eat southern BBQ" — likely to be served nonstop over four weeks between mid-May and mid-June.
When Mother Nature does turn up the heat, Julander said "the first thing we ought to learn out of this is where we've been stupid. ... There's no kinder, gentler way to say it."
The flooding will reveal places where people shouldn't have put in homes or businesses and it will also test the competence of infrastructure improvements put in place since 1983. Flooding, too, will test the efficiency of emergency responders, and grade how well flood control plans work, he said.
"There's no question there's going to be phenomenally high flows," Julander added
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Story written by Amy Joi O'Donoghue with contributions from Jed Boal.
