Heavy rainfall over scorched soil sent flash floods raging down Cutler Creek on Sunday night, spilling mud down through Ponderosa Village and briefly shuttering U.S. Highway 550.
The torrent of water and debris — loosed by nearly an inch of rain in the area — closed the highway around 5 p.m. as charred tree trunks and stones crashed down the canyon.
As the Gold Mountain Fire has waned in the last week, officials have warned that burned areas along Cutler, Dexter, and Cow creeks will be particularly susceptible to flash flooding. Destroyed vegetation and flame-seared soil can combine to create a surface impervious to water and rapidly funnel rain downhill.
A weather station in the Cutler Creek area clocked 0.88 inches of rain in about half an hour Sunday evening, according to the National Weather Service in Grand Junction.
“The closest comparable thing I’ve seen to this is an avalanche with how suddenly it came – trees were getting ripped up. It was wild,” said Megan Kienapfel, who spent Sunday night in Montrose after fleeing her home in Ponderosa Village.
It was the second time this month Kienapfel and her family have had to evacuate from their home on Blue Tip Drive. The first time was when the fire was raging across the hillsides above her home. She said a rainstorm last Friday – two nights prior to the debris flow that caused them to evacuate – caused a small amount of flooding that she slept through, but there was no missing Sunday’s deluge.
Just after 4 p.m., Kienapfel said, she began packing her car when the weather turned heavy. Even though they started loading up when they first noticed the rain, it wasn’t enough time. Within about 20 minutes, the waters were too high for her to reach her car. They were stuck.
“I just kept watching it from all the different windows, and would run downstairs and make sure it wasn’t getting into our basement somehow. And as soon as I saw the flood coming, and I knew we weren’t able to get to the cars in time, I ran downstairs and flipped the breakers immediately,” she said.
At Kienapfel’s neighbors’ house up the street, she said, waves around 15 feet high slammed into their home, and they later found a rock smashed into a tree about eight feet off the ground. Eventually, a deputy with the Ouray County Sheriff’s Office helped Kienapfel and her family evacuate.
Colorado Department of Transportation crews were continuing to try to clear the flooded area Monday afternoon, as excavators scooped out acrid heaps of near-black mud along the highway’s edge. Charred debris washed downhill clogged the bridge over Cutler Creek, while signs of the mud flow extended over 100 yards from its southern bank.
Erin Walter, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service’s Grand Junction office, told the Plaindealer that forecasters are still expecting above-average precipitation for the Western Slope into September. Last Friday, she added, the area around Cow Creek saw more intense rainfall, while Dexter and Cutler Creeks were hit harder Sunday.
“It’s more the rainfall intensity that can trigger that debris flow movement, and just because we do see debris flow in one storm doesn’t mean that it’s gone. It’s a large burn area. Those are big basins. There’s still the threat of a debris flow coming down,” Walter said. As of Wednesday morning, the fire had burned an estimated 36,509 acres, according to InciWeb.
“Staying aware of our forecasts and having an ability [to get] our warnings is really important this time of year,” she added. “Every fire is unique, and you don’t know how quickly or how exactly they’ll respond.”
Kienapfel, for her part, said she’s likely going to spend the rest of her summer with one foot out the door.
“My plan, at least, is to essentially just live out of my go bags,” she said.
Chart Riggall is a journalist with Report for America, a nonprofit program that helps boost reporting resources in underserved areas. He’s also part of the Western Environmental Reporting Collaborative, a partnership between Report for America, High Country News and local news organizations across the West.
