The Salt River runs through Phoenix along the Tempe Border. Normally, this western side of the river is a dry river bed, but due to an extraordinarily wet winter, dams upstream have opened to make room for runoff. The river bed between Hayden Road and west of Mill Avenue was turned into The Tempe Town Lake back in 1999 with the building of inflatable dams on either end. In order to handle the 40,000 cubic feet per second of water flow, the eastern dam was completely lowered, and the 16-foot western dam was partially lowered for the first time since the dam was completed in 1999. The lowering allowed the Salt River to fill its banks for the first time in many years – a rare sight in our parched valley.