Floods subside, snow may be unstable on mountains

PALMER — Although the situation became frightening over the weekend, flooding in the Butte due to warm weather seems to have subsided. Meanwhile, experts warn snow conditions in the mountains might be treacherous.

Ice dams seemed to have caused flooding on a couple of properties on the west side of the Old Glenn Highway in Butte over the weekend. As of Sunday, Mat-Su Borough Emergency Manager Casey Cook said, the water had more or less subsided.

“The ice dams looked like they either broke away or the water was going underneath them,” Cook said.

He said water levels actually got worse very briefly before improving.

“They had kind of a flash flood there in front of the burled arch home,” he said, referring to a property on the highway that has been near the epicenter of the most recent spate of floods.

But after that flash-flood, the water seemed to dissipate, Cook said.

“It was more than a trickle, but it was definitely a lot slower than it had been to that point,” he said.

Mat-Su Borough Assemblyman Jim Sykes also went out there this weekend.

“It’s just a guess — I’m not a professional — but I’m guessing that the warmer weather has helped,” Sykes said.

When the Frontiersman went to investigate Monday, conditions on the ground seemed to have improved. Sykes said he hopes the weather will stay warm long enough reset the ice formations.

“Hopefully, the weather will kind of give us a reset back to the fall and we won’t have any more issues through to breakup,” Sykes said.

Cook said the weather is actually working in the borough’s favor in once sense.

“The water out there is actually low. It’s way below flood stage, so it’s just a matter of ice dams,” he said.

This most recent flooding comes as the borough is trying to figure out how to spend state money allocated to work on the problem of flooding along this stretch of the Old Glenn. It’s a tough decision.

“Whatever we can do is trumped by Mother Nature,” Sykes said.

The law is kind of idiosyncratic. The borough can mine gravel in the river, but if it just moves gravel from one spot to another that’s not considered mining and the borough is barred from doing that.

“I think you may see some creativity in trying to make the laws work for the people and at least have some influence on what happens in the river,” Sykes predicted.

Meanwhile, the Hatcher Pass Avalanche Center issued a warning of high avalanche danger at mid, upper and low elevations Saturday morning, which expired Sunday morning.

“Over Wednesday and Thursday, 2 inches of water accumulated from rain in a 30-hour period. Temperatures above freezing dominated. A combination of warmth, rain water and a deep unstable snowpack structure have contributed to widespread, very large avalanches,” the center’s website warns.

The center had posted photos and even a video of avalanches in the area. The information is available at hatcherpassavalanchecenter.org.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.