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Dogged rainfall soaks region

Deluge keeps road crews busy, residents on edge
As some seek shelter under awnings along Main Avenue, a pedestrian protects himself from Monday morning’s heavy downpour.

It seemed like there was a plumbing problem in the skies above La Plata County on Sunday and Monday, as storms wrung lightning, hail and reams of rain from the clouds in terrific, gloomy, spurting volumes.

Snow, rain and icy conditions at Wolf Creek Pass felled one truck Monday, causing the pass to close. Though it quickly reopened, on Monday afternoon, the Colorado Department of Transportation was advising all buses and commercial trucks to use chains.

This weekend’s deluge – more than an inch of rain fell in Durango on Sunday alone – places a sodden exclamation point at the end of an already-soaked September.

In average years, the Durango-La Plata County Airport usually receives 1.91 inches of rainfall in September, said Dan Cuevas, technician with the National Weather Service in Grand Junction.

As of noon Monday, the airport had recorded 3.49 inches of rainfall so far this month, or “considerably above normal,” Cuevas said.

Recent rains are largely a happy development, said Office of Emergency Management Director Butch Knowlton, who said in terms of yearly rainfall, we’re still 3 inches below average.

“This has been a really good rain and welcome precipitation for Southwest Colorado. These storms put us in a catch-up mode,” he said.

But the heavy showers weren’t without their drenched detractors.

On Monday morning, people shopping on Main Avenue in downtown Durango huddled beneath store’s awnings trying to debate whether they should risk a $12 parking ticket or brave the pea-sized hail. At lunchtime, some self-hating drivers returned from work errands to scenes of devastation: cars with windows rolled down.

This weekend’s torrent wasn’t as dramatic as the storms that carried off Dorothy and Mary Poppins, nor as destructive as the famous rains that fell on Durango in October 1911.

“We consider the October 1911 storm a 100-year weather event,” Knowlton said. “This weekend wasn’t that unusual.”

Yet it wasn’t a light sprinkle.

Durango Street Superintendent Levi Lloyd said in terms of wreckage, this weekend’s storm was “actually a fairly significant event, similar to last Sunday’s storm. They’re saying last Sunday’s storm was greater than the 10-year storm event and probably on par with a 50-year storm event.”

He said in terms of flooding, one problem with “what’s happening now is that the ground is completely saturated. It can’t take any more water, so storm drains are filling up.”

“It’s just continual cleanup,” said Nancy Shanks, CDOT spokeswoman. Shanks said back-to-back weekend storms have forced the agency to contract an enormous suction truck, the hydro excavator, to vacuum dirt, gravel and detritus that’s plugging culverts along Colorado Highway 3, South Camino del Rio near Walmart and U.S. Highway 550 north of town through its 6-inch nozzle.

And this weekend’s downpour has set road-clearing crews back.

Doyle Villers, La Plata County’s road-maintenance superintendent, said crews were still trying to clean up last weekend’s storm when this weekend’s hit, undoing much of their good work.

“We’ve got widespread flash-flooding throughout the county,” he said. “The hardest hit area is probably District 2 (county roads that begin with the number two) in Durango. The real hot spots right now are County Road 213 (La Posta Road), County Road 250 (East Animas Road) and County Road 225. We’re just trying to keep the road surface as clean as we can until we can go in and haul off the debris.”

He said crews had been busy Monday mopping floodwaters, mud and refuse all day.

“We have crews in each district, and we’ve supplemented them with three other specialized teams,” Villers said.

“We’ve got the entire workforce working on roads,” he said, trying to unplug stopped-up drains and remove rock and debris that this weekend’s rain flushed down hills and mountainsides onto roads and into ditches.

Villers said, “Tell people to watch for poor driving conditions in areas known to flood. Local residents know that, but it’s always worth telling them, as they’ll be experiencing that for a while,” he said.

cmcallister@durangoherald.com



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