FLOOD00269 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

4.1 SOUTH PLATTE: RIVER BASIN 4.1.1 South Platte River , Flood Historv. Flooding along the South Platte River normally occurs from May through September w~h the most frequent flooding occurring during June. Serious floods, however, have occurred from February through December. Floods normally occur under non-ice affected cond~ions. Ice jams, however, are possible even though their historical frequency of occurrence is rare. ~ Flood of 1844. Floodwaters purportedly covered the bottom lands in Denver vicinity from bluff to bluff. Flood of 1864. Three separate floods caused by heavy rains over snow occurred during May and June on the South Platte River. A resident of Platteville later described the flood of mid-May at that location as the largest flood he had observed prior to 1925. Flooding occurred in late May and again in early to mid-June. The South Platte River flood in Weld County was augmented downstream from Denver by tributary inflow from both the mountain and plains tributaries. Flood of 1876c The flood of late May 1876 resuRed from rainfall on snowpack. It was reputed to have been the highest flood since 1864. Flood of 1894. Heavy rainfall over the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains caused flooding on the South Platte River in late May and early June. Floodwaters purportedly covered hundreds of acres in the Brush vicinity. Oldtimers said the South Platte River was "fully two miles wide". TIle Fort Morgan Times of 8 June 1894 stated that "for 24 hours on 2 June, the flood touched the caps on the top of the bridge piling". Considerable inflow resuRed from such streams as Clear Creek, Boulder Creek, and SI. Vrain Creek. Flood of 1921. Heavy rainfall over rruch of the upper South Platte River basin caused flooding in Weld County in early June. Between Brighton and Orchard, the wooden bridges were impassable'; two were destroyed and the approaches to the others were destroyed for a distance e,f several hundred yards. At Fort Morgan, the water surface crest was comparable to that of the flood of 1894. The discharge of this flood at Kersey and at Balzac was the largest ever recorded at that location except for the flood of May 1973 and the flood of June 1965, rl~spectively. . Flood of 1935. Rains of cloudburst intensity over the basins of the plains tributaries to the South Platte River east of Denver occurred on 30-31 May following the wettest May in Colorado in 48 years. It was reported that a "ver~able wall of water" appeared on Bijou Creek about 4 miles upstream from ~s confluence w~h the South Platte River. The flood crest reached Fort Morgan on 31 May and was reported to be 10 feet above flood stage having a discharge of 84,300 cubic feet per second. Mhough the flood crest attenuated rapidly downstream from Fort Morgan, the floodwater reached the Union Pacffic Railroad grade near Crook, Colorado. . . Colorado Flood Hydrology Manual c 4.2 [RI)Ff