FORT COLLINS, Colo. -- Strong thunderstorms containing very heavy rain dumped upwards of 5 inches of rain over the Ft. Collins area Thursday evening causing significant flooding in the southwest portions of the city. One of the hardest hit areas during the storm was the Paragon Point Neighborhood near Fossil Creek where flood waters overtook streets and filled basements. Residents were urged to move to higher levels of their homes until the flood waters subsided.

Another area hit hard was the Park Lane Mobile Home Park off Mulberry on Airpark Drive. Several families voluntarily evacuated when debris plugged a culvert, flooding the neighborhood and some homes. The culvert was drained Friday morning and the Larimer County Health Department is now helping those families get back into their homes.

The storms began over the Denver area shortly after 4pm Thursday and slowly moved north across the city. Storm Chaser Tony Laubach witnessed minor flooding in the Lakewood area as water runoff covered parts of roads around Wadsworth and Mississippi. Flooding was also documented just north of downtown Denver where Airtracker 7 showed scenes of flooding and at least one stalled vehicle.

Later in the evening, storms developed over the northern foothills and moved over the Ft. Collins area where storms sat over the city for well over an hour dropping rainfall amounts between 3 and 5 inches over southwest Ft. Collins and 1 to 2 inches elsewhere in the city. A flash flood warning was issued shortly after 7 p.m' by the National Weather Service in Boulder for the city of Ft. Collins as reports of flooding began to pour in.

While water was all over the place, no evacuations or major damage was reported. No injuries were reported. either.

Below are some reports of rain totals in and around the Ft. Collins areas over a 2 to 3 hour stretch starting just after 7 p.m.

5.31 inches 3SSW of Ft. Collins
4.96 inches in Ft. Collins (other measurments from Ft. Collins show 3 to 5 inches from trained spotters)
3.10 inches 3SW of Ft. Collins
2.55 inches 5 S of Ft. Collins

As the evening moved on, the storm system responsible for the flooding slowly drifted east into the Ft. Lupton area. Other storms attemped to fire west of Denver, but never reached the intensity of the Ft. Collins storm.

The forecast for Friday has a chance of storms across northeast Colorado as the moist airmass remains in place over the region. The storms, much like Thursday, have the potential to dump a lot of rain in a short amount of time. Flooding will be a concern, especially in areas hard hit Thursday.

The flooding in Ft. Collins was no where near the level of flooding the city sustained this same week of the year back in 1997. That flood left a widespread path of destruction and caused nearly $100 million in damage to the campus of Colorado State University.

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