EVERETT — Much of Snohomish County is flood country, and this year’s mild winter has many people thinking they caught a break.
Not just yet, officials say.
The flood season in Snohomish County most years begins in October and runs until April, said Mark Murphy with the county Department of Emergency Management.
“We don’t consider ourselves out of danger until the end of March,” he said. No major floods have been recorded in the county after the end of March, but that doesn’t mean they can’t happen, he said.
In the fall, rain saturates the soil so much that it can’t absorb more water. As the weather turns colder, snow accumulates in the Cascade foothills. The worst flooding is usually triggered by warm, heavy rains that rapidly melt snow.
In 2006, the Election Day floods caused more than $30 million damage. Last winter, the toll was about $20 million.
The floods wreaked havoc across much of the county in early January 2009. People scrambled to salvage personal belongings and to move livestock to higher ground. In Stanwood, water rose up to the windows of some cars along Marine Drive.
Janet Mott of Camano Island works in Stanwood and remembers last year’s floods and how sandbags saved the day.
“Without the sandbagging, the town probably would have been completely flooded,” she said.
This winter, though, Western Washington had better luck.
The Wallace River in Gold Bar spilled over its banks in late fall, flooding some roadways. It was nothing like the year before, residents said, when people had to flee their homes.
It’s pretty much guaranteed that some rivers will go out of their banks a couple times a year, Murphy said.
No people or homes were threatened in January when a levee breached along Ebey Slough south of Marysville. A burrowing animal weakened the levee, causing a 20-foot section to fail. The damage was quickly plugged.
The county’s levees are in good shape, Murphy said. Engineers can’t predict exactly how the levees will behave in case of a big flood, but nothing suggests that any of them will fail.
The Stillaguamish Flood Control District in October was concerned with the growing population of beavers along area waterways, Murphy said. No other major levee issues were reported this season.
Historically, the weather follows a cyclical pattern with up to four years of rough weather followed by up to seven years of milder weather, Murphy said.
“I’m not sure if that’s what we are seeing here, but, I can tell you, we are not complaining,” he said.
The cyclical pattern is not something we can bank on, however, said Doug McDonnal, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Seattle.
“The problem with this sort of rule of thumb is that you can’t really pin down any specifics,” he said.
Flooding in Western Washington is mostly caused by storms that produce heavy rain. So far, nothing indicates that such a storm is headed our way in the next few weeks, McDonnal said.
Katya Yefimova: 425-339-3452, kyefimova@heraldnet.com.
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