Rivers fast and furious

Mountain rivers and streams are running full and fast and bringing with them a potential danger for Utah County residents.

There's no need for sandbags, officials say, but people — especially parents of small children — should be extremely cautious near the waterways.

"Every year that we have above-normal runoff, people die by falling in or jumping in," said Brian McInerney, a hydrologist for the National Weather Service forecast office in Salt Lake City.

Too often those accidents involve unsupervised children, McInerney said.

In the past three weeks, a 2-year-old boy nearly drowned in Farmington Creek and a pair of 5-year-old boys were rescued from the Duchesne River. The children had wandered away from their adult supervisors in both instances.

And children aren't the only ones at risk, McInerney said.

"People need to use good judgment," he said.

In April, three men died in separate river accidents, including a 23-year-old man who jumped off a bridge into the chilly Jordan River west of Lehi.

Even though it may be 80 degrees outside, rivers and streams are just above freezing and in many cases moving too rapidly for even experienced swimmers to handle, McInerney said.

"You've got about 2 minutes before you can pull yourself out before you succumb to hypothermia and your arms and legs don't work," he said.

Rivers and streams in the mountains east of Utah County likely will remain at high levels for the next seven to 10 days, but no flooding is expected, McInerney said.

The arrival of 80-degree temperatures has speeded up melting of high snowpack in the mountains east of Utah County, but flows aren't exceeding channels' capacity.

"(The warm weather) is actually good," said Don Nay, Utah County Public Works associate director. "It's bringing (runoff) down in a controlled fashion."

The three-week stretch of temperatures in the high 60s and mid-70s allowed the low- and mid-level snowpack to melt at a manageable rate of about an inch per day, McInerney said.

"We depleted a good deal of the snowpack prior to this heat moving in," he said.

The wildcard in Utah County's flooding forecast is a severe rainstorm. Officials say heavy rainfall likely would push many channels over capacity and result in flooding.