Weekly Flooding Update

From City Engineering:

The Engineering Division is monitoring lake levels and the potential to flood year round.

To keep people informed, we're sharing a weekly update with you, and as frequently as needed, should a major rain event happen. We are not sending these to elevate concern, this is just a new communication option for us to keep you informed as flooding deeply impacted our community last summer, and may be top of mind when rain moves through our area.

Here is the update as of Friday, May 24, 2019:

We are not experiencing any significant issues with additional flood risk due to the current lake levels.

We are forecast to get up to 1" of rain tonight.

Typically 1" of rain in the Mendota watershed gets you a 3" rise in the elevation of Lake Mendota. So if we get 2" of rain, Mendota could be expected to rise to 850.6 – not of immediate concern but starting to creep toward that (we were at 850.9 before the Aug 20th rain in 2018).

If we receive the intense rains predicted, there remains the potential for flash flooding during heavy downpours and localized flooding at enclosed depression areas (areas with only the pipe to remove stormwater no overland flow route out of the area - Midvale/University is a prime example).

Overall, when this type of storm is predicted – plan ahead. Move your car out of areas that known to be prone to flash or urban flooding. This type of flooding normally occurs and recedes in 0.5 – 1.0 hours after the storm passes.

For more information, visit our Flooding website.