Manderson prepares for flooding as ice approaches
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MANDERSON – With the ice jam that plagued Worland, causing severe flooding, now moving down the Big Horn River toward Manderson, the town has taken precautions to avoid damages caused by potential flooding.
“Right now, we’ve got ice jams about five miles outside of town,” said Mayor Tim Patrick on Monday. “We are monitoring the Big Horn, and our only real worry is the bridge. If it jams up there we could have a problem, but it should go right by.”
After flooding in Worland, Patrick mobilized 110 local volunteers, joined by National Guard and Smoke Busters, to fill and deploy sandbags around crucial points of Manderson’s infrastructure.
“We’ve created a berm barricade around city hall and across Railway Avenue, walled up the low areas of town and the sewer drains, and prepared the school in case water moves in that direction,” said Patrick. “So far there’s no water on the ground, but it was great to see the community come together.”
According to the Big Horn County Emergency Management Facebook page, The ice jam is holding steady north of Rairden Bridge. This jam was caused when the ice from the Nowood broke loose and dumped into the Big Horn Sunday. There is some low land flooding at this time.
The Big Horn River is flowing but has some increased levels of ice at the gauges in both Basin and Greybull. According to the National Weather Service, at 7:59 a.m., the river gauge on the Big Horn River at Basin was at 10.8 feet, flood stage is 10.5 feet. Ice jamming may cause the stage to rise to 11.5 feet at times Monday and Tuesday. The river stage on the Big Horn River at Greybull at 7 a.m. Monday was at 89.43 feet and may rise to 93.5 feet through
Tuesday. The flood stage on the Big Horn river at Greybull is 92.0 feet
According to the National Weather Service in Riverton, the state is expecting significant precipitation over western Wyoming through Tuesday night and strong to possibly damaging wind east of the Continental Divide mainly Monday and Tuesday. Snow will continue to develop over western mountains and continue off and on through Tuesday night. The snow is expected to mix with or change to rain below 7000 feet. One to 2 feet of snow is expected across the western mountains and could see rainfall amounts between a half and one inch, as well as a few to several inches of wet, heavy snowfall.
