Laserfiche WebLink
<br />"At 12:50 o'clock Monday afternoon, July 27, 19H, fo77oh'ing all the heels of one <br />of the hardest rainstorms experienced in the city, a river of mud, very <br />conservatively estimated at between Band 10 feet in height, swept out of Cornet <br />Creek canyon, just north of town." <br /> <br />"A waterspout of unbelievable volume, resulting from a cloudburst near the top <br />of the Sawtooth Range, directly north of town, was the source of the flood, and <br />water flowing from the pinnacle point of the range, almost due north of the <br />Liberty Be77 mine workings, and gathering momentum in its mad race through the <br />Cornet Creek Canyon." <br /> <br />As described in the San Miauel Examiner (un~'own date), damages from the 1914 <br />flood were estimated at about $250,000: one person was killed, and many were <br />badly injured. <br /> <br />The August I, 1969, flood was described 'ir the :rellurid(~ TimE~;i. (August 8, 1969 <br />edition) as follows, <br /> <br />"It has been a wet summer in San Niguel County. Shortly after 2:00 p.m., severe <br />rumblings were heard from the mountains in the general vicinity of the Old <br />Liberty Be77 workings. Between 2:30 and 2:45 p.m., a stream of mud loaded with <br />boulders, tree trunks, and debris was observed coursing from Cornet Creek. A <br />clock, demolished in the flood was later found to have stopped at 2:34 p.m." <br /> <br />Damages from the 1969 flood were not as <br />confined to the western side of town. <br />2 to 6 feet in these two events. <br /> <br />extensive as the flood of 1914 and were <br />Sediment deposits ranged in depth from <br /> <br />Mud flow events in Telluride are usually initiated by br'ief, very intense <br />thunderstorms, generally lasting less than 30 minutes, follov/ed by rainfall of <br />decreasing intensity. The thunderstorms may be relatively localized, engulfing <br />only the Cornet Creek drainage. <br /> <br />2.4 Flood Protection Measures <br /> <br />No FEMA approved flood protection measures have been constructed along Cornet <br />Creek. However, at the mouth of the Cornet Creek canyon, near the apex of the <br />alluvial fan, a berm of approximately 8 to 10 feet in height and 100 feet in <br />1 ength exi sts. The berm is i nt,ended to conta'i n fl ows from the mouth of the <br />canyon and direct them away from the eastern and central portions of town. <br />Discussions with public works personnel for the town indicate that the berm was <br />formed by the accumulation of materials periodically cleared from the channel <br />at the mouth of the canyon. It was apparEmtly constructed in an effort to <br />contain flood flows in the existing Cornet Creek channel. Failure of the berm <br />could result in abandonment of the existing Cornet Creek channel. <br /> <br />3.0 ENGINEERING METHODS <br /> <br />3.1 Hydrologic Analyses <br /> <br />Streamflow along Cornet Creek is not gaged. Clear-water flood hydrographs for <br />Cornet Creek were established by routing runoff from the watershed for rainfall <br />of given return period. The MUDFLOW flow-routing model was applied. A detailed <br />