Blame one of the fastest snowmelts in years for widespread overland flooding in Red Deer County.
A few conditions combined to create the unusually bad early spring flooding, said county operations director Marty Campbell on Wednesday.
The drawn-out winter, frozen ground, lots of late snow, and a dramatic temperature spike combined for the snowmelt on steroids. Drainage ditches were soon overwhelmed and Medicine and Little Red Deer Rivers overflowed their banks in places.
“There was so much happening in just a couple of days,” said Campbell. “It was probably one of the fastest spring melts in the shortest amount of time.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it happen this quickly.”
The flooding was nowhere near the scale of the floods of 2005, 2007 and 2013. But those are mountain snowpack-fed floods and usually happen around June. It’s wait and see on that front.
Campbell said in the flooding that began late last week the frost-hardened ground could not act as a natural sponge as usual.
“(Melting snow) was running on top of the ground instead of soaking in,” he said. “A lot of water was moving very quickly once it warmed up the way it did, following the channels and ditches and topping the roads.
In his 21 years with Red Deer County, Campbell has never seen so many road closures at once.
“In a matter of two or three days, four days maximum, we had 30 roads closed.”
As many as 20 county staffers and more than dozen others from Ledcor and local contractors responded as reports of flooding came in. Cottonwood-Gordon Community Hall was readied to take evacuated residents if required.
County staff are now assessing the damage.
Only a handful of the 30 roads barricaded because of flooding have been opened so far.
“For the most part the overland flooding has receded,” Campbell said. “We still have a few roads and localized sections of road with water topping over.”
Spring has sprung #reddeercounty pic.twitter.com/8oG1929CxK
— Brigitte (@BrigitteD_B) March 19, 2017
Campbell said the county is mapping out a repair plan now. Crews will have to wait until the frost is out of the ground and roads dry before repairs can begin.
“We don’t want to damage miles of road to repair a small section when we just needed to wait for a day or two for it to dry up more.”
The extent of the damage and repair costs have not yet been determined.
Campbell said it could have been worse.
“I’m just thankful we didn’t have two feet of snow left and plus-20s C — that would have been a different story.”
pcowley@reddeeradvocate.com
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