AUGUSTA — Western Maine and Lewiston-Auburn weren’t included in Thursday’s Maine River Flow Advisory news release, because there isn’t any flood potential looming.
That’s what Mark Hyland, operations director of the Maine Emergency Management Agency said Friday afternoon in Augusta.
“It’s my understanding that the flood potential in Lewiston-Auburn is low at this point,” he said. “We’re also not expecting a lot of problems in western Maine.”
Hyland said that with plenty of sunshine and warmer temperatures forecast for the coming week, snow will melt but it won’t cause any high waters because overnight temperatures remain at or below freezing. That slows and even stops any melting from daytime temperatures, he said.
“We’re not expecting much melting in the next few days to a week, and there’s not anything in the forecast for big rains,” Hyland said.
Snow melt alone doesn’t cause flooding in Maine in the spring. “Rain is really the driver for whether we see flooding or not,” he said.
For an example, Hyland said high temperatures on Saturday and Sunday will be 54 to 64 degrees, respectively, while lows will range from 30 to 34 degrees, “which means the snow will be melting very slowly.
“While the snow will be significantly melting during the day, the snow pack is pretty deep and the snow is very dense,” he said.
Snow density is the relative amount of water in the snow.
According to Saturday’s hydrological survey by the National Weather Service in Gray, the Androscoggin River at Rumford was 10½ feet below its 15-foot flood stage, while the river at Auburn was 8 feet below its 13-foot flood stage.
The only flooding potential that MEMA is currently watching is possible ice jams on rivers and tributaries in eastern Washington and Aroostook counties. Rivers there remain locked-in “pretty solid” with ice, Hyland said.
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