LOVELAND, Colo.\u00a0 \u2014 On July 31, 1976, the Sylvan Dale guest ranch buzzed with summer guests.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It was a beautiful day,” remembers Susan Jessup, 82, who spent the summer working for her parents at the ranch located at the mouth of Big Thompson Canyon.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the evening, ranch guests loaded into wagons for a ride around the property. When the guests returned, they faced an urgent warning from Colorado State Patrol Sergeant Willis Purdy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A wall of water was headed their way.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Guests rushed to higher ground, sheltering at Jessup\u2019s parents’ house. A lone German guest who failed to understand the warning remained at the bunk house.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As the water rose, guests heard his cries for help. The German was stranded on the roof of the bunk house. Using lassos tied to a clothesline pole, ranch wranglers lowered themselves down,\u00a0 pulling him to higher ground.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“As soon as they got him off the roof, the roof went down the river,” Jessup said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In roughly five hours \u2014 from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. \u2014 thunderstorms near Estes Park unleashed 12-14 inches of rain over the region, sending a torrent of water into Big Thompson Canyon. The wall of water reached 30 feet, destroying more than 400 houses and killing 144 people.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fifty years later, the 1976 Big Thompson flood remains one of Colorado\u2019s deadliest natural disasters. Although this year\u2019s record low-snowpack has stoked concerns over drought and wildfires, floods remain a persistent threat along the Front Range.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ingredients for flood risk are absolutely found here,\u201d said Kelly Mahoney, a research meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. \u201cLots of places on the East Coast get more rain, but the impacts aren\u2019t as severe as here.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Colorado\u2019s steep topography and rocky soils funnel rain into dangerous flash floods.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Wildfire burn scars are particularly vulnerable. Wildfires sear vegetation that would normally absorb water, chemically alter soils to repel water and even increase the potential for landslides, Mahoney said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOVELAND, Colo.\u00a0 \u2014 On July 31, 1976, the Sylvan Dale guest ranch buzzed with summer guests.\u00a0 “It was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":794947,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":["post-794946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=794946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/794947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=794946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=794946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=794946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}