Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Saturation

Depending on which part of town you're considering, Seattle just reported heaviest recorded rainfall in local history. The northern metro NWS station reported a 24-hour total of over 5 inches of rain .. with an approximated SIX BILLION GALLONS of water falling on the Seattle area. A classic Pineapple Express system coming (literally) "hot" on the heels of several weeks of crazy cold high pressure followed by lots of low elevation snow. On Sunday Joe Mosquera & I were shredding a foot of fresh pow at Baker. By Monday morning Seattle was in the 50's & all our rivers were blowing out.

Obviously, this has caused a ton of flooding & problems for the city, but nothing compared to what's going on south of Oly, where hurricane-force winds & the flooded Chehalis River & other swollen streams have forced the DOT to totally shut down a section of I-5, both directions, for at least the next couple days. On I-5 in between Seattle & Tacoma, the DOT reader boards are advising Portland-bound travelers to take Rt 18 out to I-90 in Yakima, then down to I-84 & back west to P-town .. which is insane.

So, while rescue crews have their hands full plucking people from the roofs of their houses, our amphibious brothers & sisters are dutifully plucking low-hangin' high-water fruit. For instance, got this from Rathmann today:

Condit Dam ... Big one! So It's been raining like crazy here in Hood River...Here's a teaser of something I ran this morning...MORE on the way!

photo courtesy of Keel Brightman


This dude was totally impressed .. obviously.

I'm sure the playboaters around here are all goin' cuckoo about all the water in the Skykomish, etc. .. but our tribe is more concerned about The Robe & how this flood event may have bullied that ever-changing riverbed around. A year ago, a similar but even bigger flood event brought about The Robe's current incarnation (Version 3.0, for those of you keeping track) .. and we're all quite happy with that, so here's to hopin' that nothing got ruined in there .. or -- as Andrew points out -- that maybe some things even got improved. New info is sure to come to light in the next couple days as our favorite run drops down into sane "exploratory" levels.

7 comments:

Shane Robinson said...

Nice. I was stripping concrete forms on the day the previous record was set. While on this record I was stuck inside a law school classroom, on my glimpses out the window, I kept thinking that this storm had to be getting close.

Also, I have been calling our current version, Robe 3.1. There was another flood about this size or so that reshuffled a few rocks after the biggie last year ... most notably, cleaning up Little Miss Sunshine.

Todd Gillman said...

OK, 3.1 duly noted.

Must've been the same flood event that turned Effigy's reported "new 20-ft waterfall" into a spread-out 6-ft to 8-ft double-boof..

20-foot Waterfall 3.1

Anonymous said...

3.1?

I've seen landslide and sunshine change 3 times before 2003...

would 3.1 include those changes?

Is landslide runnable again?

Looking forward to some photos for us drought starved southeastern folks.

Cutch said...

Those would have been changes 2.8, 2.6 and 2.3 that you are referring too. Get it right.

Todd Gillman said...

hell, i dunno .. robinson's the self-appointed nomenclature decider. hit him up.

before this last flood, landslide was runnable & had been run .. but it's still a total P.O.S.

Shane Robinson said...

Cutch gets the basic gist, and he's only run it at 4.7 - and thats feet not the version ;-)

I declared Robe in its 3.0 version last year after the massive floods:
http://therangelife.blogspot.com/2006/11/robe-canyon-30-beta.html

Full points equal a major change in the canyon, with smaller changes, like one or two rapids being a tenth of a point change.

So yes, the old Sunshine, T1, T2, and Landslide changes predate 3.0 and would be 2.? or 1.? or ????

got it? get it!

Shane Robinson said...

Adding this link to the conversation for the sake of posterity. Thanks Ethan, for passing it on.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/theoregonian/2088004808/
zp