Rain, Warm Weather Sends Area Rivers Rising

Recent rain and warm weather caused some slopes in the Inland Northwest to shed snow.

But the highest peaks still are buried under enough snow to provide plenty of water this summer, forecasters say. And area rivers are not expected to flood despite this week’s unseasonably warm weather.

Eastern Washington and North Idaho rivers “are showing some pretty good increases, but most of them are well within their banks,” said Dave Westnedge, a hydrologist at the River Forecast Center in Portland.

Westnedge predicted most rivers will crest well below flood stage sometime today. Among them are the Coeur d’Alene and St. Joe in Idaho and the Touchet near Walla Walla.

The Spokane River won’t crest until late Friday, Westnedge predicted, at 5 feet below flood stage.

Latah (Hangman) Creek is running at levels normally expected during spring runoff, said Milt Maas of the National Weather Service office in Spokane.

The creek, a tributary of the Spokane River, was at 6.9 feet Wednesday morning, about twice the normal January level and well above Tuesday’s flow of 4.8 feet. But that’s still 4 feet below flood stage, said Maas.

He predicted above-average temperatures, with low clouds but little rain, through the weekend. Temperatures should drop next week, he said.

A forecaster at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resource Conservation Service said there still is a healthy snowpack in the mountains that feed water to the region’s rivers in the summer.