Flooding Unlikely During Snowmelt

National Weather Service meteorologist Bob Reed says it’s too early to say how quickly the snow accumulated during the past few weeks will melt.

Reed says high temperatures this weekend will reach the upper 30's.

“Certainly we would like a slow, orderly melt,” says Reed. “The ideal situation there would be not much rain on top of it, and just warm enough temperatures to melt it a little during the day, and then cooling down at night to slow down the process a little bit.”

Reed says the soil had absorbed much water previous to the heavy snows, and that has already frozen, so the ground wouldn’t absorb much moisture when the snow melts.

Reed says flooding would only happen if it both rained and temperatures became abnormally warm, into the 50 and 60 degrees range. He says then, the snowmelt would “run off” in the equivalent of two to three inches of rain.