Snohomish County flooding was less severe than expected

The lights clicked on in his house every two hours Wednesday night and into Thursday morning. Each time, Carl Oxwang peeked outside, then checked online to see whether the Snohomish River was about to spill into his kitchen.

It wasn't until the morning light began to inch across the rain-soaked sky that Oxwang, 64, knew he'd escaped the flood.

"We made it!" he said, surveying his muddy but nowhere-near-submerged garden.

Lowell-Snohomish River Road, which is built up on an embankment, is the only thing that separates Oxwang's home and others along the road from the Snohomish River. When the river floods, water rushes over the road and spills off the embankment. The driveways, yards and gardens that sit below the road often end up submerged, and residents usually find inches of water in their living rooms.

That didn't happen this time. Rain that drenched the region this week was initially expected to bring record floods, but the water's long-­simmering wrath subsided at the last minute. Index, Sultan and Gold Bar all suffered flooding from the Skykomish River, but Stanwood escaped major disaster from the Stillaguamish River and the Snohomish River merely lapped at the edges of the city of Snohomish.

"All's quiet on the western front," said Noel Gilbrough, a project manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The Snohomish River crested in Snohomish at nearly 30 feet about 10 a.m. Thursday, Gilbrough said. The Skykomish and Snoqualmie rivers, which both feed the Snohomish, are both still in flood stage at various points upstream, so the Snohomish River will likely stay high through today and maybe even Saturday, he said.

The river is affected by the tide, and an extremely low tide was expected late Thursday night and early this morning, Gilbrough said. That could pull large amounts of water out to sea fast enough to slough off sides of the riverbank and levees, he said.

"We've got saturated banks and levees, and in many cases what's keeping them stable is the high water," he said.

If the water rushes by too fast, the levees could crumble. That's the worst-case scenario, Gilbrough said.

"Once we get beyond that, we're feeling pretty good," he said. "The local diking districts and the county have done a good job of fortifying and strengthening those levees, so we think that risk is fairly minimal."

County Executive Aaron Reardon on Wednesday issued an emergency declaration for the county. The declaration could mean more support from the state and the Army Corps of Engineers if damage is widespread, said Christopher Schwarzen, Reardon's spokesman.

All flood watches issued for the county's river system were lifted late Wednesday night, and the county's Department of Emergency Management closed its emergency operations center at noon Thursday.

In Sultan, where on Wednesday an army of teenage boys assembled and shouldered sandbags to protect downtown buildings, including City Hall and the library, the water has receded.

"Everything's back to normal," Sultan city administrator Deborah Knight said.

Twin Rivers and Haller Parks in Arlington were both flooded, but Arlington assistant city administrator Kristin Banfield said that's expected.

"We know it gets wet, so we just close the park, let the water recede, and it dries out," she said. "Neither park sustained much of any damage, so we're back to business as usual."