Within two years, the Alamo Canal became filled with silt from the Colorado River. Engineers tried to alleviate the blockages to no avail. In 1905, heavy rainfall and snowmelt caused the Colorado River to swell, overrunning the third intake cut into the bank of the river and sending the flood into the Alamo Canal. The resulting flood poured down the canal, and down two former dry arroyos, the New River in the west, and the Alamo River in the east, each about long. Over about two years, these two newly created rivers carried the entire volume of the Colorado River into the Salton Sink.