The Big Thompson Flood

The Big Thompson Flood was one of the deadliest floods in Colorado’s recorded history. This flood occurred on a saturday which marked Colorado’s 100th anniversary of statehood. There was 3,500 people present and they were all unaware of the strange atmospheric conditions. Throughout the Big Thompson Canyon, there are steep, rocky, mountain slopes.  During that saturday afternoon, moist air rose upwards and the unstable air began to build into thunderstorms. The picture below demonstrates a radar image of the thunderstorm over the Big Thompson Canyon. Intense thunderstorms stretching from north-central Colorado (point A) to southeast Kansas (point C).

At 6:30 p.m. these heavy thunderstorms began to dump heavy rain. These thunderstorms remained over the Big Thompson Canyon for 3 hours, and developed into a gigantic thunderstorm system. The Thunderstorm remained over the Big Thompson Canyon because high-altitude westerly winds, which are usually strong enough to push thunderstorms eastward and out of the area, were unusally weak. There was 144 deaths, and more than 250 injuries were reported. This extreme flood caused $35 million dollars in damage.

This picture above demonstrates the after-math and how severe the storm was. There was  418 homes and businesses that were destroyed, and over 300,000 cubic yards of debris from the canyon that had to be removed. Since this extreme storm occurred during night, it caught most people by surprise, no one was prepared for this flood. According to several law enforcers, who issued warnings, most of the people in the canyon were not officially warned. In result, leading to several deaths. Today, flood specialists recognize that awareness of flooding is a combination of weather preparedness and personal responsibility. "Bricks serve as a memory of the victims in the 1976 flood of the Big Thompson River in Drake."