\u2018It’s good to see the extremes,\u2019 meteorologist says<\/p>\n
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The 1911 Flood occurred on Oct. 5, 1911, when the Animas River raged with a flow of 25,000 cfs. (Catalog Number: 81.07.13 from the La Plata County Historical Society Photo Collections\/Durango Herald file)<\/p>\n
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The flooding that breached the levees of Vallecito and Grimes creeks on Oct. 11 and forced the evacuation of 390 Vallecito homes has been described as \u201cunprecedented.\u201d<\/p>\n
Record flow rates fueled by record rains left the little valley awash, with recovery efforts expected to continue for months.<\/p>\n
The event \u2013 which owed its debut to Tropical Storm Priscilla and, to a lesser extent, Tropical Storm Raymond \u2013 is a striking reminder of the power of Mother Nature.<\/p>\n
But when compared with another destructive flood that inundated towns, drowned fields of crops and washed out miles of railroad tracks, the Vallecito flood hardly made a splash.<\/p>\n
The 1911 Flood occurred 114 years ago on Oct. 5, 1911 on the Animas River.<\/p>\n
According to the Animas Museum in Durango, \u201c1911 was a wet year for southwest Colorado with heavy snows in the high country and heavy rains through the summer.\u201d<\/p>\n
A gentle rain began Oct. 5, the museum\u2019s summary said. By morning, 2 inches of rain had fallen and the storm showed no sign of letting up.<\/p>\n
The Animas Museum described the Animas River\u2019s waters as \u201cunstoppable.\u201d<\/p>\n
The river flowed at an estimated rate of 25,000 cubic feet per second, washing out railroad tracks and shutting the stretch of Denver & Rio Grande Western Railway\u2019s railroad for nine weeks.<\/p>\n
By comparison, the Animas River reached 4,860 cfs on Tuesday, less than a fifth the amount in 1911.<\/p>\n
Matt Aleksa, meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Grand Junction, said the 1911 Flood was \u201cway worse\u201d than the flood that washed through Vallecito last weekend.<\/p>\n
The only real comparable details, he said, are both events were caused by tropical storm systems that resulted in consecutive days of heavy rainfall.<\/p>\n
He said 1911 opened with a strong winter and heavy snowpack. In the summertime, runoff combined with a strong monsoon season, and disaster finally struck in October when a tropical storm rolled through.<\/p>\n
The soils were already saturated, meaning moisture from rain wasn\u2019t absorbed into the ground and instead flowed over it.<\/p>\n
In 1911, Durango received almost 3.5 inches of rain over 36 hours. Silverton received 4 inches of rain. Gladstone north of Silverton received 8 inches of rain, Aleksa said.<\/p>\n
Between 2 and 4 inches of rainfall was measured in the Animas River Basin and 4 to 6 inches was measured at higher, mountain elevations. He said the Durango area probably received half the precipitation last weekend as it did during the 1911 Flood.<\/p>\n
Aleksa said technology has improved since the early 1900s, but 25,000 cfs is a lot of water no matter how one frames it.<\/p>\n
A lot of rain dropped by the remnants of Priscilla last weekend was sapped up by the ground, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s good to see the extremes,\u201d he said. \u201cThis event was significant. We did have a lot of rainfall we don\u2019t typically see around this time of year. Really, rarely see that much.\u201d<\/p>\n