 The Denver Post is running a story about the 40th anniversary of the 1965 South Platte River flood [June 16, 2005, "The fury and the fears"]. They are running a nifty slide show. From the article, "After lunchtime on June 16 - 40 years ago today - the coal-black sky delivered a rainstorm so furious that people in Douglas County said they labored to breathe. A rancher put a washtub in his yard to measure the rain, and it quickly overflowed. The National Weather Service recorded 14 inches - a year's worth of rain for the region - in a little more than three hours near Larkspur. The storm drove a 20-foot wall of water from Douglas County to downtown Denver that evening, taking at least 21 lives, devastating 15 counties and leaving mountains of mud and $540 million in damage - $3.2 billion in today's dollars."
A young Coyote Gulch was living near Clear Creek out in unincorporated Jefferson County at the time. We left our townhome and went up to my grandmother's house in North Denver (Berkeley Hill) to high ground. In the years before the building of Chatfield Reservoir and Bear Creek Reservoir the South Platte use to roil through Denver in the spring, fallen trees and other debris being carried along north, towards the plains.
Here's an article from the Denver Post about the possibility of another flood of the same magnitude [June 16, 2005, "Engineers rally around reservoirs"]. From the article, "Colorado could very well see the same amount of rain that produced the 1965 deluge, but state engineers believe they're ready. A lot has changed in 40 years. Since the 1965 flood, Chatfield and Bear Creek reservoirs were built for flood control, giving metro Denver three places to hold back a storm surge, counting Cherry Creek, which was completed in 1950 after a series of floods in the 1930s. All three are designed to accommodate more than 2 feet of rain, more than the 1965 storm dished out, said state engineer Hal Simpson."
The State Water Quality Board sidestepped new temperature standards for streams this week, according to the Denver Post [June 16, 2005, "Water panel hedges on temperature standards"]. From the article, "Colorado Water Quality Control Commission hedged on adopting water-temperature standards Wednesday but pledged to work toward putting binding rules in place by 2007. Saying the science was far from perfect, the governor-appointed commission adopted a set of temperature standards that are slated to take effect at the end of 2007."
Category: Colorado Water
6:29:29 AM 
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