STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK

A few raindrops inexplicably spilled out of a blue sunny sky as Bob Wiederrick strolled around Heagle Park Sunday evening.

His Kiwanis Club had just finished painting the picnic benches at the park a royal blue color and ha moved dirt underneath the children’s swings. Now he was trying to see how else the club could assist the popular Hailey park that was damaged by last year’s floods.

“The city has some money to fix the tennis courts,” Wiederrick  said. “But I guess nothing will get done until this year’s flooding is over.”

Flooding returned to the Della View neighborhood over the weekend as the Big Wood River rose to 4.75 feet—under flood stage of 5.5 feet.

The Draper Preserve has been closed to recreational activity as water flows over its trails. And Cedar, War Eagle and Della Vista streets were closed as water streamed out of the park onto the roads, creating small lakes in a few people’s driveways.

But this year’s flood has been nothing like last year’s, said Carmen Northen.

“At the most we’ve had about an inch of water over the streets,” she said.

Kevin Wilson, who lives on War Eagle Drive, was prepared for the worst. He built a small fortress of sandbags around his house and was pumping water from his crawl space into the street.

But it was nothing compared with last year when he spent a month and a half without power.

Weather forecasters had predicted between 10 and 20inches of snow above 7,500 feet Friday and Saturday in Idaho’s Central mountains. Snow did crown the mountains around Sun Valley but the storm totals did not appear to be near that amount.

Most had melted off by Sunday afternoon. And the Sun Valley area was spared the vicious storms that rolled through Boise and Twin Falls on Mother's Day, as the Wood River Valley received just a few scattered sprinkles.

A flood advisory issued on Friday forecast the Big Wood River could rise to 5.0 feet by Tuesday morning.

Northen, a student of the weather, noted that the weather station at Ohio Gulch had measured about a half-inch of rain from the storm.

“They’re predicting it to warm back up to about 71 degrees on Thursday. And, from what I understand, our snowpack is still 90 percent of normal. So we’ll have to see what happens,” she said.

Further north, groundwater has appeared along the bike path near Gimlet about three weeks ago. A couple homeowners along Gimlet Lane who were surrounded by water last year have placed sandbags and bladders around their homes.

But flooding has been relegated so far to a driveway going past one of the homes.