FLOOD04800

• County: El Paso
• Community: Colorado Springs
• Stream Name: Cottonwood Creek
• Basin: Arkansas
• Title: Engineering Study of Cottonwood Creek Drainage Basin
• Date: 8/7/1979
• Prepared For: Colorado Springs
• Prepared By: Lincoln Devore
• Floodplain - Doc Type: Floodplain Report/Masterplan

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Some heavy, but smaller storms have

centered on a line two to three miles east of the mountain range.

The most notable recent storms include the 1965 Monument - Palmer Lake

storm, the 1967 Ivywild - Broadmoor area storm, the 1967 Mesa area

storm, the 1978 north Colorado Springs storm and the 1979 Manitou

storm. Most of these caused considerable damage of one sort or

another, but not major flooding. The exception to this was the major

flood caused by the-1965 Monument - Palmer Lake storm in Douglas

County. This however was part of an overall major storm which had

another center along the storm axis in the Peterson Field area.

It must also be noted that the heaviest

24 hour rainfall reported along this storm axis was over the upper

portions of the Cottonwood Creek, Pine Creek and Kettle Creek basins.

This was the rainfall center of the May 30, 1935 flood on Monument

Creek. Kettle Creek was the prime contributor to this flood flow,

but flow in other creeks - particularly Cottonwood - was also quite

high. No accurate measurement was made of either precipitation or

runoff, but precipitation was reported unofficially as 16 inches in

24 hours near Burgess Road. This unofficial report is probably high,

but there is no doubt that a considerable amount of rainfall during

several intense periods within the general 24 hour storm.

The storm defined as the 100 year

frequency (.01 percent chance of occurrance) and known locally as the

Type II-A storm, is a six hour duration, low intens't storm with a

very high intensity burst at about the 1-1/2 hour point. The 1935

storm appears to have been similar to a series of three or four such

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