You may have noticed during Monday's short downpour in Okotoks, some streets may have had some overflowing water on it and can always a bit of a concern for residents seeing water closer to their homes than usual.

Okotoks CAO Rick Quail says the reason behind the rise in level is due to the mechanics of storm drains.

"The storm sewer system, which is the pipes underground, are engineered and designed to handle a one in fifteen year rain fall event," he says "What were experienced (Monday) was far in excess of that for a short concentrated period of time."

Quail says the excessive rainfall and the storm sewer systems did exactly what they're designed to do.

"Generally speaking, the catchments and the collection of water especially within the street system, it is designed and planned act in that exact fashion, because we could never build an underground storm sewer system to capture rain fall intensities, perhaps like what we saw this afternoon or what Chestermere just experienced the other day," he says.

Quail says water that goes down the storm sewer system, enters into what is called a catch basin, which gradually fills up before going down the storm pipes,  and when downpours like Monday's happen, you'll see more water than usual on the roads but that's all within the design.

"The land is designed and contoured so the water catches in that area," he says. "Then it makes its way into the storm sewer system, if the rainfall event exceeds the capture area, there's an overland flow escape route where it goes down to the next drainage area, the point is its engineered to stay within the roads and the lanes.