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Two new storms headed our way The snow blanketing the hills Wednesday in east Medford may soon be washed away by new storms. Mail Tribune / Jamie Lusch Wednesday Jan 4, 2017 at 6:28 PM Jan 4, 2017 at 6:28 PM By Mark Freeman For the Tidings Southern Oregon will likely sidestep the brunt of a weekend storm that is expected to melt away Medford's heaviest snow in nearly a century, swelling streams and causing some localized flooding without causing the Rogue River to reach its banks. The next storm front is expected to bring intense rain and high-elevation snows to Northern California and pummel the Sierra Nevada Range, but it's likely Medford will see a mix of rain and freezing rain totaling about 1½ inches, according to the National Weather Service. "We're definitely dodging, to some degree, a bullet here," meteorologist Ryan Sandler says. "This amount of snow is something you might see in a lifetime. Yet even though we have all this snow on the ground, it may not be so bad." But right now, all bets are off for next week, when another "atmospheric river" of precipitation could bring a wallop to Southern Oregon if the heart of the storm points this way, according to the Weather Service. Computer models used to predict rainfall have it pegged at as much as 3 inches of rain, but possibly more if the main part of the storm draws a bead on the Rogue Valley, Sandler says. That much rain has the chance to create enough runoff into already swollen streams to cause more localized flooding. "We're concerned that system could cause more flooding than the weekend system," Sandler says. "If that's a big one and it's pointed our way, there could be some impressive flooding. "So right now that's the million-dollar question — how much rain will there be next week," Sandler says. Heavy snows followed by rainstorms have been the blueprints for flooding in Southern Oregon. Similar one-two punches created the flood events of 1955, 1964 and the New Year's Day flood of 1997 that sent Ashland Creek charging through downtown Ashland. Tuesday's snow lived up to its side of the formula, with 8.3 inches recorded at the Medford airport in a 24-hour period, according to the federal Natural Resources Conservation Service. Much of the Medford area received up to a foot of snow, according to unofficial reports. Even more impressive, however, were snowfalls elsewhere in the Rogue River Basin, which saw its snowpack grow from 103 percent of average to 108 percent of average overnight, according to the NRCS' Snowtel gauge sites. "A lot of our sites in Southern Oregon got up to 15 inches of snow, so that's pretty cool," says Julie Koeberle from the NRCS's snow-survey program in Portland. What stood out from this snow was the amount in lower elevations, which contains larger areas than higher-elevation peaks and can pack more overall water that could melt more rapidly than snow at higher elevation, particularly during rain storms. "That's always a concern, especially about low-elevation snow," Koeberle says. "It's been so cold our low-elevation areas have been able to hold up a decent snowpack." So far, the Rogue River is forecast to remain within its banks, though flows are forecast to rise dramatically beginning Sunday, according to the federal Northwest River Forecast Center, which monitors gauges along the Rogue and other rivers. The Rogue is forecast to peak Monday at Dodge Bridge near Eagle Point at about 4 feet from flood stage, with the Rogue cresting at Grants Pass Monday about 6 feet shy of flood stage, according to the forecast center. — Reach Mail Tribune reporter Mark Freeman at 541-776-4470 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/MTwriterFreeman.