A motorist displays a look of surprise while driving through an area of standing water near the intersection of Southwest Century Drive and Southwest Donovan Avenue in Bend on Tuesday afternoon.

The rain that has fallen the last few days in Central Oregon won’t bring the amount of flooding it did last year at this time.

However, the improvements sparked by last year’s torrential rains could help keep waters at bay this winter.

Nearly a year ago – during New Year’s Eve weekend – rain came pouring down over Central Oregon, shutting down Bend underpasses, overflowing the city’s sewer system, closing U.S. Highway 97 at the junction of U.S. Highway 26, flooding downtown businesses in Madras and prompting Jefferson County officials to plan for evacuations.

A series of weather systems has been moving through Central Oregon since Thursday, bringing with them a mix of rain and snow, said Jon Bonk, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Pendleton. However, government officials said flooding danger is not close to what it was last year.

So much flooding occurred a year ago, Bend Wastewater Reclamation Manager Paul Rheault said, because 3 to 4 inches of rain fell in a short period of time.

”None of the storms we have had so far are anywhere near that,” Rheault said.

The same is true in Madras.

City Administrator Mike Morgan said crews have been checking Willow Creek morning and night. Last year, Willow Creek flooded a downtown bridge, damaged roads and forced downtown business owners to place sandbags around their doors to keep out water.

There was quite a different scene Tuesday afternoon, when Morgan said the sun had come out and the roads were partially dry.

”It’s happily boring,” he said.

A few hiccups

The rain that has fallen so far has caused some hiccups in Bend.

Late Tuesday morning, the Franklin Avenue underpass was closed for about 25 minutes so public works crews could pump out the water that had collected there. On Saturday, the Franklin Avenue and Third Street underpasses were shut down three times so water could be sucked out.

Standing puddles of water have built up along some streets, and city crews had been sent out to high-water areas, Rheault said.

”The rainfall is spread out over a longer period of time. It’s much easier to deal with it,” Rheault said. ”There have been breaks in the action, which is nice.”

For the first time in six years, rising water at Wickiup Reservoir caused Jeremy Giffin, the Des-chutes Basin watermaster, to open up the the reservoir. The move sent out an extra 100 cubic feet per second of water into the Deschutes River. The reservoir was already releasing 175 cubic feet per second, around five times the amount it typically releases during the winter months.

Giffin said the extra water was released because the reservoir is nearing capacity. The concern, Giffin said, was for the reservoir to be completely full later in the season, running the risk of overflowing the reservoir if more heavy rain came.

”We are just playing it on the safe side,” he said.

Tumalo, which has much of the downtown built in the middle of the river channel, is at the greatest risk of flooding along the Des-chutes River, Giffin said.

The weather system that was in town Tuesday was expected to bring rain through early this morning, when winds of 20 to 25 miles per hour are predicted to pick up.

”It’s nothing unusual given that it’s winter season,” Bonk said. ”This is the time of year when storms start flowing into the area.”

Weather not unusual

The mixture of rain and snow isn’t unusual for this time of year either, he said. In the 36 hours leading up to midday Tuesday, most of the populated parts of Central Oregon received about a quarter of an inch of rain.

In Bend, 0.82 inches of precipitation fell between 8 a.m. Saturday and 8 a.m. Sunday, 0.06 inches was reported Sunday, and 0.30 inches fell in the 24 hours beginning Christmas morning, said Mary Smith, also a meteorologist at the weather service.

While the snow level was at 5,000 feet Tuesday, it was predicted to come down to 3,500 feet early today, she said, possibly bringing an inch of wet snow to Bend.

The precipitation will probably be on its way out of the area by Thursday, Bonk said, with Friday and Saturday looking dry.

While government officials said they weren’t seeing conditions that mirrored last year’s flooding, they did point to fixes done in the past 12 months to better handle future flooding.

Rheault said the city of Bend purchased a $300,000 truck that can be used to suck up water. The city already has two similar trucks in its fleet. The city spent another $300,000 on new pumps and the trailers to carry them.

And the city has improved some of its drill holes and dry wells, which are basins beneath the ground where water can seep into porous rock.

In the case of the storm last winter, the ground surrounding the dry wells and drill holes was already saturated because of snow melt and rain, leaving the holes to fill up quickly and overflow.

Redmond didn’t experience many problems with last year’s New Year’s flood, said Shannon Taylor, wastewater division manager with the city of Redmond.

And during this rainy spell, Taylor said she wasn’t aware of any flooding problems in the city.

”I think that a lot of the improvements we’ve done have been helping,” she said. The city of Redmond has been doing capital maintenance projects, such as putting in a new water retention pond off Lake Road and repairing pipes that are part of the downtown storm-water system.

”There’s a running list that we have that we’re slowly but surely making our way through,” she said.

But, in Redmond, it seems the high-intensity spring storms are what causes most of the flooding problems, she said, and not the winter storms during which it rains over a couple of days.

In Madras, the city has hired two additional public works employees to help maintain its storm drainage system. It also put in a storm-water pipe at Third and J streets to help with flooding issues, Morgan said.

The city received about a third of the funding it requested from the federal government to help shoulder the cost of last year’s flooding.

The $33,900 went toward covering overtime expenses and some money for road damage. However, Morgan said that the city wasn’t reimbursed for much of the street repairs brought on by the flooding and for the two footbridges that were washed out.

Morgan questions how much the city can do to prevent damage from storms like the one last year.

”In the end, if we have a major event, it will flood. It is a flood hazard zone,” he said.

Jefferson County Public Works Director Mike McHaney said the county received more than $50,000 in federal money for last year’s flood damages. The county has used much of the money to fix a 50-foot section of county road that washed out.

McHaney said that while there aren’t any problems with flooding now, there could be in a few weeks when the ground is more saturated.

”What this is doing right now, it is setting the table for future problems,” McHaney said.