RUMFORD – The National Weather Service in Gray on Thursday issued a flood watch for today in the mountains and foothills of western Maine and northern and central New Hampshire.

The watch includes Franklin, Oxford, and central and southern Somerset counties, and Coos, Grafton and Carroll counties in New Hampshire.

Rain showers developing ahead of an approaching cold front were expected to affect these regions after midnight Thursday, and were expected to become more numerous this morning.

National Weather Service meteorologist Butch Roberts in Gray said that milder temperatures accompanied by high winds from the storm would result in snowmelt.

“There is already some melting going on in the higher elevations, but it’s going to be windy tomorrow, and that’s going to burn snow,” Roberts said late Thursday afternoon.

The combination of snowmelt, high winds, rain, and ice jams on the Androscoggin River and some of its tributaries, could increase the risk of flooding, he said.

“It will be an unpleasant situation to go through, but then we’ll be back to normal afterward,” Roberts said.

A strong cold front is expected to arrive this afternoon, plunging temperatures back to seasonal levels, and freezing standing pools of water and road slush.

Oxford County Emergency Management Agency Director Dan Schorr said he was worried about what could happen with snowmelt, incoming rains, and a four-mile ice jam plugging the Androscoggin from Rumford to Rumford Center.

“We could have the same problems we had last year, with a lot of water being dumped in there. I’m worried about it backing up into Bethel,” Schorr said Thursday in Paris.

Last winter’s floods, which isolated Canton and Bethel, were caused by a 3-inch deluge that came on the heels of 20 inches of snow, he said.

But this year, Schorr said, the Rumford ice jam is worse, because he believes it to be several feet thick. That, combined potentially increasing flows from the Ellis and Swift rivers, could make for a long weekend, he added.

“The Ellis and Swift rivers can pop up real quick, so we need to keep an eye on them,” he said.

The weather service stated that people living near an ice jam should be on the alert Friday for rapid rises along the Androscoggin and some of its tributaries.