DENVER, April 15, 2024 – Today the Mile High Flood District launched its 45th annual flash flood prediction program. This early notification service alerts local authorities from the 7-county Denver/Boulder metro area of developing flood threats, operating in partnership with the National Weather Service.

A large network of rain and stream gauges provides continuous monitoring of threatening weather and flood conditions. Twitter users can receive notifications from the ALERT System when heavy rainfall is occurring in the region.

Forecasters at Skyview Weather provide essential support by calling 911 communications when flooding is imminent. Critical information is then relayed to appropriate response agencies.

As we enter the 2024 flooding season, MHFD urges everyone to heed flood warnings by: 1) taking protective actions recommended by NWS and public safety officials; 2) avoiding trail use near streams during heavy downpours; 3) keeping away from floodwaters while on foot or in a vehicle. Remember that most flood fatalities are people who perish in vehicles.

Before flooding impacts your neighborhood, take some time to learn about flood risks near your home, school and workplace; and consider purchasing flood insurance to protect yourself financially. Most property insurance policies do not cover flood losses. 

Above all, stay flood safe!

About the Mile High Flood District:
MHFD was established by the Colorado legislature in 1969 to protect people, property and our environment by working regionally with local governments to address drainage and flood hazards. This is accomplished through a combination of preservation, mitigation and education activities. MHFD serves a population of approximately 3 million from Denver and parts of the six surrounding counties that include 35 incorporated cities and towns.

For more information, visit www.mhfd.org
Contact:  Bruce Rindahl, brindahl@mhfd.org, 303-455-6277

DENVER, April 15, 2023 – Today the Mile High Flood District launched its 44th annual flash flood prediction program. This early notification service alerts local authorities from the 7-county Denver/Boulder metro area of developing flood threats, operating in partnership with the National Weather Service.

A large network of rain and stream gauges provides continuous monitoring of threatening weather and flood conditions. Twitter users can receive notifications from the ALERT System when heavy rainfall is occurring in the region.

Forecasters at Skyview Weather provide essential support by calling 911 communications when flooding is imminent. Critical information is then relayed to appropriate response agencies.

As we enter the 2023 flooding season, MHFD urges everyone to heed flood warnings by: 1) taking protective actions recommended by NWS and public safety officials; 2) avoiding trail use near streams during heavy downpours; 3) keeping away from floodwaters while on foot or in a vehicle. Remember that most flood fatalities are people who perish in vehicles.

Before flooding impacts your neighborhood, take some time to learn about flood risks near your home, school and workplace; and consider purchasing flood insurance to protect yourself financially. Most property insurance policies do not cover flood losses. 

Above all, stay flood safe!

About the Mile High Flood District:
MHFD was established by the Colorado legislature in 1969 to protect people, property and our environment by working regionally with local governments to address drainage and flood hazards. This is accomplished through a combination of preservation, mitigation and education activities. MHFD serves a population of approximately 3 million from Denver and parts of the six surrounding counties that include 35 incorporated cities and towns.

For more information, visit www.mhfd.org
Contact:  Bruce Rindahl, brindahl@mhfd.org, 303-455-6277

DENVER, April 15, 2022 – Today the Mile High Flood District launched its 44rd annual flash flood prediction program. This early notification service alerts local authorities from the 7-county Denver/Boulder metro area of developing flood threats, operating in partnership with the National Weather Service.

A large network of rain and stream gauges provides continuous monitoring of threatening weather and flood conditions. Twitter users can receive notifications from the ALERT System when heavy rainfall is occurring in the region.

Forecasters at Skyview Weather provide essential support by calling 911 communications when flooding is imminent. Critical information is then relayed to appropriate response agencies.

As we enter the 2022 flooding season, MHFD urges everyone to heed flood warnings by: 1) taking protective actions recommended by NWS and public safety officials; 2) avoiding trail use near streams during heavy downpours; 3) keeping away from floodwaters while on foot or in a vehicle. Remember that most flood fatalities are people who perish in vehicles.

Before flooding impacts your neighborhood, take some time to learn about flood risks near your home, school and workplace; and consider purchasing flood insurance to protect yourself financially. Most property insurance policies do not cover flood losses. 

Above all, stay flood safe!

About the Mile High Flood District:
MHFD was established by the Colorado legislature in 1969 to protect people, property and our environment by working regionally with local governments to address drainage and flood hazards. This is accomplished through a combination of preservation, mitigation and education activities. MHFD serves a population of approximately 3 million from Denver and parts of the six surrounding counties that include 35 incorporated cities and towns.

For more information, visit www.mhfd.org
Contact:  Bruce Rindahl, brindahl@mhfd.org, 303-455-6277

If you have difficulties receiving notifications via SMS/MMS text messaging, try the following procedure:

Cellular providers routinely tighten security procedures, thus making text messaging services like ours problematic. A third-party procedure called Pushover is available that may help. To subscribe simply click on the above link and follow the instructions.

Additional SMS/MMS subscription lists are available for authorized Pushover app users. To obtain login permission contact the MHFD list administrator.

Meteorological Support

Skyview Weather will be providing the flood forecast and notification services for the 2020 flood season (May 1 thru September 30). This long-running program will function as in the past, working closely with our good friends at the National Weather Service.

Concerning the COVID-19 situation, while Skyview’s services are considered “essential” with respect to Colorado’s Amended Public Health Order, their meteorologists are capable of working from their respective home offices and are expected to do so until the order is lifted.

During April they will be calling their primary contact points to verify phone numbers and update operating procedures. The MHFD Flood Prediction Center phone number is the same as last year (303.458.0789) and can be used anytime to talk with a Skyview forecaster.

ALERT System Field Maintenance

The gaging stations are nearing 100% ready status thanks to the efforts of the field crews from OneRain and Water & Earth Technologies. The COVID social distancing requirements have not slowed the annual start-up progress as their work directly involves providing essential products and services that support critical government functions of public safety and emergency response in full compliance with Colorado’s stay at home order.

Concerning recent updates to web mapping applications like GMap, ArcGIS and others; browser cache-ing can be problematic. If problems occur try clearing your browser cache, then close and restart your browser and see if this fixes the issue. If not, please send an email to kstewart@udfcd.org to report the problem.

Google Chrome users may install an extension that makes this process simple. Simply connect to https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/clear-cache/cppjkneekbjaeellbfkmgnhonkkjfpdn?hl=en and follow the website instructions to install the extension.

Loading this extension into Chrome gives you a little button in the top right of the screen that you can click whenever you want to “clear your cache” — be sure to make the settings only clear the cache, not cookies or history or any of the other things (see settings screenshot below).  Once you have it set up you may click at will.

A recent update to ALERT GMap causes active alarms to blink and stop blinking when the alarm becomes inactive.  When you click on the blinking station you will see the actual time that the alarm occurred and the threshold that triggered the alarm.

Click here to see a Flash™ video of this feature.

On July 16, 2014 we broadcast our first in a series of short instructional webinars offered to help local officials improve their storm/flood monitoring and emergency response capabilities, and keep apprised of relevant changes.  That training focused on how to make best use of the ALERT System GMap website, which is one of the more popular features available from https://alert5.udfcd.org.

A Windows Media Player-compatible recording of this webinar is now available.  You can download it from www.udfcd.org/FWP/ALERT/trainingvideos/.

To receive notices regarding future webinars simply subscribe to the FRAUG list at this website.

Some Google Chrome users have experienced problems with the ALERT Map webpage updating automatically. To fix this we recommend the following:

1. Make sure you are running the latest version of Chrome, v.35.
2. To re-load the page try hitting the F5 key.

This YouTube video shows how to enable auto updates for the Google Chrome browser. If your IT department has disabled the auto update feature…this can turn it back on.