EDEN -- A flooding emergency shifted from Liberty to Eden on Friday and the Ogden Valley communities still have two more storms on the way.
Warm temperatures and rain melted the heavy snow that fell earlier this week, sending flood waters flowing across saturated or frozen soil.
Flood water got into at least two houses in Eden on Friday, one near 2875 North and 4800 East and another a block south. Tammy Peterson, who lives next door to the first home, said the water started getting into her neighbor's house about 2 p.m.
"(His) basement had about five feet of water in it," she said. She and other neighbors helped him remove possessions from the basement. Water dampened the carpet in the second home on 2800 North, said Lance Peterson, director of Weber County Emergency Services.
Neighbors and county emergency responders tried to redirect the flow of water away from the homes with ditches and sandbags and pump out whatever got in.
"Today we got a lot of good-hearted neighbors helping people. That's key," Peterson said. "It takes a village to raise a kid and a whole community to fight a flood."
To the north in Liberty, flooding had damaged about 12 homes Thursday night. By Friday evening, most of the water had been siphoned out, said Eli Johnson of the Weber County Sheriff's Office.
He was standing outside a home on 4100 North, which the sheet flooding had transformed into a creek on Thursday. Now sandbags, dirt and ditches border the dry roads.
One Liberty resident on Thursday night said she had never seen so much water in her front yard before as she and neighbors sandbagged her property against the flood.
"With sheet flooding, it's hard to anticipate where it goes next," Johnson said. Yards that were under water during last year's floods are dry this time around, he said.
Now that these floods have shown where they're likely to flow, emergency responders know where to keep a close eye, Peterson said.
"(These communities) still have some snow above them. Whenever you have rain on snow, there's always a possibility" of more flooding, Peterson said.
And more rain is on the way.
Meteorologists predict that two more storms will hit Northern Utah, one today and another on Monday. The National Weather Service in Salt Lake City issued a flood advisory warning for central Weber County that will last through at least late Sunday afternoon.
The first storm, beginning today and continuing into Sunday, is expected to bring 12 to 24 inches of snow, but because of warm temperatures it will add only 1 to 3 inches of overall snow cover to the mountain areas, according to the NWS.
The second system arrives late Monday, bringing rain and snow with it.
Johnson said it's too early to estimate the damage that the flooding has caused so far.
Comments