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CHEYENNE — The heavy snowfall so far this winter in parts of central and western Wyoming has forecasters expecting potential spring and early summer flooding in some major river basins that hasn’t been seen in decades.

National Weather Service hydrologist Jim Fahey in Riverton said Thursday that parts of the Upper Green, Sweetwater and Snake river basins are seeing unusually high snowpacks and potentially high runoffs as the snow begins to melt.

The Upper Green and Snake basins haven’t seen similar situations since the mid-1990s, Fahey said.

In anticipation of a high spring runoff, the Bureau of Reclamation has started releasing more water from the Jackson Lake Dam in Grand Teton National Park north of Jackson. The agency usually doesn’t start increasing releases from the lake until about May.

“These flows are necessary due to above-average snowpack and winter precipitation in the watershed and will help reduce the risk of flooding later this spring,” the agency said in a statement.

Statewide, the snowpack across Wyoming this week is 132 percent above the median for this time of year. The snowpack in the Sweetwater River Basin in south-central Wyoming is a whopping 219 percent of median.