The featured map displays NOAA modeled snow water equivalent (the depth of liquid water present in the snow pack) for the Des Moines River Basin (red outline) upstream of Saylorville Lake. A crude GIS calculation indicates that there is enough frozen water in the basin to fill Saylorville Lake 2.5 times! Of course, not all of this water will make it downstream into the reservoir, but we will have to be fairly lucky to melt all of this snow without significant flooding. The worst case scenario would be for a heavy rainfall event on top of this extensive snow pack. There is about 550 billion gallons of frozen supply upstream of a reservoir that holds 221 billion gallons.

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Tags:   flood   swe