Floods in Starkweather Creek basin, Madison, Wisconsin
The city of Madison is establishing standards for flood-plain zoning and land-use planning. The evaluation of flood potential is a necessary factor to be considered before such standards are established and put into effect. Purpose and scope. The purposes of this report are to determine the magnitude and water surface elevations of the regional (100-year) flood for both existing and future conditions, to determine their limits of flooding, and to analyze maximum hydraulic capacities of the channel system of Starkweather Creek. The regional flood is defined by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (1968, p. 94) as a flood that occurs on an average of once in 100 years and "which is representative of large floods known to have occurred generally in Wisconsin and reasonably characteristic of what can be expected to occur on a particular stream". The reaches evaluated are (1) Starkweather Creek and West Branch Starkweather Creek, for a distance of 6.0 river miles from the mouth at Lake Monona upstream to the U.S. Highway 51 crossing north of Truax Field; and (2) East Branch Starkweather Creek (2.8 river miles), from its confluence with the West Branch near Milwaukee Street upstream to a point near the Interstate Highway 90-94 crossing.