SALT LAKE CITY — The pond in Sugar House Park has been flooding over for days — exactly as it should be.
“It's storage," said Jim Nelson, a professor of civil and construction engineering at BYU and the developer of the Watershed Modeling System. "It does store that floodwater and then release it more slowly.”
There are currently flood watches in the Wasatch Back, Cache Valley and the Northern Wasatch Front.
"Some of those larger watersheds, larger rivers, they're not going to peak yet this next coming week," said Nelson. "It's still out in the future, and so I'm more worried about those that in northern Utah, that there's still a lot of snow.”
Flood water isn’t the only thing that could close roads this weekend; the Utah Department of Transportation is already preparing for wet snow avalanches to slide onto our mountain roads, according to UDOT spokesman John Gleason.
“Instead of the typical avalanches that we see during the winter, these are wet slides," he said. "And what happens is that snowpack begins to melt, and when it does, that snow just basically sloughs off and almost, it's like lava, or better yet, wet concrete.”
UDOT has already announced daytime closures in Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons for Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.
“I think we're as prepared honestly as we can be," said Nelson.
