1)   The local airmass showed a significant potential for a "tropical-
                    oceanic" type of convection,
              2)   This type storm means lower storm tops, "warm-rain" precip-,
                    itation processes, and little or no lightning,
              3)   Such storms result in anomalously low estimates of rain rate
                    using standard WSR-88D, mid-latitude Z-R relationships.

      All National Weather Service watches, advisories, and warnings were issued in a timely fashion.   This may seem surprising in light of all the incomplete and/or erroneous information that was arriving at the Denver forecast office.   In reality, the situation was a little better than it might first appear.   Knowledge of local idiosyncrasies allowed forecasters to be aware of a dangerous synoptic situation.   Also, forecasters did have knowledge of the previous day's rainfall and were alert to the possibility of flooding.   Furthermore, the forecasters had a variety of observations at their command.   For example, the unusually warm, moist nature of the local airmass was clearly shown by the morning sounding data.   Also, satellite imagery revealed both the initial development of the line of intense thunderstorms, and the acceleration of the low-level upslope flow.   Lastly -- though radar data was underestimating absolute rainfall amounts -- the reflectivity data clearly indicated nearly continuous rainfall over ground already saturated.   Even velocity data offered a clue by showing the convergence over southwest Fort Collins.

      One unanticipated aspect of the evening was in the arrival of a mesoscale, low-level jet from a large storm that was occurring near Greeley, Colorado.   This small scale feature "locked" the storm in place over the Spring Creek drainage basin for the final hour-and-a-half of the activity, and caused an excessive amount of rain to fall near the end of the event (which is unusual).   Apparently, this feature went unnoticed by forecasters in chaos of the flooding that was occurring throughout northeastern Colorado.

      A potentially serious problem was in the lack of communications between weather forecasters, and the City of Fort Collins Emergency Manager.   Due to the extraordinary response of rescuers (see next page) this did not turn out to be as great a problem as it might have been.   Nevertheless, response to the final phase of the disaster on College Avenue might have gone somewhat better if the communications channels would have been more accessible.

      The city is now installing an NWS- (National Weather Service) developed system called EMWIN (Emergency Managers Weather Information Network).   This system brings all real-time NWS text messages directly into a local computer through an inexpensive antenna.   Incoming traffic is searched automatically by the computer for key words (such as Larimer county, Fort Collins, Watch, Warning, Advisory, etc).   The computer then initiates a variety of different actions (such as paging the EM, printing out the text to a printer, etc) depending on a pre-selected set of choices.   EMWIN allows the EM to "worry about the weather" only when it is necessary, and supplies weather updates rapidly in an emergency situation.

      In addition to the EMWIN link highlighted in the previous paragraph, there is also additional information about the meteorological aspects of the flood at this CSU site.