Academics and officials are observing 50 years since a massive flash flood tore through Big Thompson Canyon between Estes Park and Loveland. A July 31, 1976 storm dumped over a foot of rain on the area, killing 144 people.
Neil Grigg is a civil and environmental engineering professor at Colorado State University. He told KUNC monsoon rains brought the flood on fast and many people were caught off guard.
“In 1976, we had a convergence of this high level of rainfall, and it happened to drop at the wrong place, which was at Estes Park,” Grigg said. “It fell on rocky and steep slope soils, and it was almost like a bathtub effect, where so much rainfall ran off so quickly down the Big Thompson Canyon, and at the time, people were not really aware of this flood risk.”
The state’s historic flooding events have taught lessons and inspired advancements in engineering, infrastructure, and warning systems to improve flood management, including the 1965 flood of the South Platte River over a decade before Big Thompson…