UTAH'S FLOOD WATCH
Ogden River running near capacity as water managers prepare for runoff
Apr 11, 2023, 5:57 PM | Updated: Apr 17, 2023, 11:59 am
WEBER COUNTY, Utah — Right next to the rodeo grounds, the Ogden River runs near the banks, and it’s actually not all that uncommon on a good water year.
On Tuesday, the Weber Basin Water Conservancy District released the water downstream at just over a thousand cubic feet per second, sometimes reaching around fifteen-hundred cubic feet per second.
That’s around 97% of the capacity, and officials are doing this to prepare for the real deluge of water still waiting upstream in the mountains. Officials are taking similar measures on the Weber River too.
Ogden officials warn public to be safe around rising, fast-moving rivers
They can fill up many of the reservoirs but don’t want to do that just yet, even though some, like Pineview Reservoir, have enough room for more water.
“Right now, Pineview is 30% full… so we’ve got a big hole in Pineview, but we have three and a half times the volume of Pineview, sitting up there in the mountain that we’ve got to pass through, so there’s still a lot of water we’ve got to pass through to the Great Salt Lake,” explained Scott Paxman,
Meanwhile, some homeowners along the Ogden River and up the canyon are preparing for what’s to come as they gather sandbags and place them near their homes.