Colorado's Rivers Overflowing today, but they were empty yesterday 5/11/11

Sorry, to the people along the Mississippi dealing with the disastrous flooding, but here comes round 2. I live in Denver, and I drove over the Platte River yesterday, and I was very surprised that it was barely trickling by since the weather has been warm. With record snow fall this past season... OVER 42 FEET!, I assumed it was running near capacity. But it was empty. Today as of right now, the Platte River is starting to overflow the banks in Downtown Denver. Strange. Denver Metro has also been expanding all the water facilities here to be concluded in 2012... again strange.

More to come
platte 1

This is the forecast... Storms coming from the wrong direction.. shows huge snow drifts up in the mountains and all the rain... Does not show the river thought.. still looking for a video...


www.9news.com...

Sounds like mother nature went out drinkin last night then forgot to pee before bed


oh and s&f

I could not find the news clip... so I ran down there and took a pic

I guess people are flag happy and not so comment happy today. I'm not saying this doesn't deserve flags, just saying ATS isn't into typing today. But I digest...

I would love to see pics, if you have them, OP.

Thanks

And according to USGS, you had a wee earthquake today...
A 3.9...

I live in Illinois and its around 78 degrees and there are big pieces of hail coming down right now with house shaking thunder and wicked lightning.

Denver Native here.
What they do during storms and in the spring time is slowly drain Chatfield Reservoir which drains into Platte River to make room for all the mountain run-off and excess from the storms (when we get ones like this one).
Nothing unusual about what's going on. I remember being 10 years old and the Platte was flooded from May to September. It has happened a few times since then. We have over 40 feet of snow in the mountains that is going to melt like crazy once it heats up! It all has to go somewhere. We will probably see some localized flooding, but nothing like in the south. That's why we have Cherry Creek and Chatfield.

Our water and flood control systems are some of the most advanced in the country because of out mountains. After the Flood of 1965, they started implementing these control systems.
buckfifty.org...
My mom recalls this wall of water flowing by. She could hear it, living about 10 miles from where the water was flowing.

I'm from Colorado... this is very common, it happens every year because of the runoff from melting snow in the mountains.