the Flood of aught five
gee, do you think it's possible that we have really f--ed up the world climate???
Reno had a 100 year flood on New Year's Day 1997, and then surprise! we had a 40 year flood a mere 9 years later (8 years and 364 days actually) on New Year's Eve, January 30 2005. At this great link is a 3-4 day snapshot of the Truckee's flow. If you scroll down to the paragraphs for 12.5-12 feet you'll see what we got two weeks ago.
My Mill Valley homies Vinyl played at the Green Room on that Friday night, Jan 30. They had a helluva time getting home the next day, see below. Before the show I coaxed the boys to walk down West Street to show them how high the river was. The show was excellent, and wired as I was when it was over I made my usual bad decision to have One More Beer at Tonic... (why? because I could...) So I get home about 3 AM, and I'm puttering around eating peanut butter when it sinks into my damaged consciousness that there are emergency vehicles outside, driving slowly up and down the riverside streets with their lights flashing, honking their horns, in an end-of-the-world kind of way.
hmmm.... guess it's time to move the truck to high ground. Since I'm the only one up, I am the first in my block to move my vehicle, so I get the primo parking spot around the corner! By the time I walk back, the neighbors are waking up and their moving cars and all their garage crap and getting the basement area shipshape for possible inundation. I went to bed about 6AM and even at that I managed to miss the filling of the little sandbag wall that was in the driveway the next day.
I get up noon-ish on Saturday and wow! we have a situation! Water covers the road by the river, it covers Wingfield Park and is flowing over Arlington Street! but not I am happy to say, flooding our building. I'm feeling pretty haggard from last night, but this is so special! I go out to explore the new soggy contours of my neighborhood.
All of the downtown bridges except Virginia Street are closed. On that bridge is a big ole steam shovel trying to catch logs as they get caught under the bridge - quite fun to watch. It was quite cold and too windy and wet to risk pictures with my delicate little Canon, and I felt like sh-t anyway so I repaired to my warm and dry home for a few hours.
Towards sunset the sun came out and I did do a picture-taking foray and got some great shots - the world was a reflecting pool - the reflection of the buildings and walls and trees in the water covering the basketball courts was particularly excellent.
Antediluvian observations - that's after the flood for you kiddies that missed Bible School.
The river has been high so long it seems normal. Now, two weeks after the flood, the water level has come down to about the level it was last spring when I thought it was raging. For reference, "normal" spring/summer levels is about 300 CFS (cubic feet/second), it's about 1,300 CFS now, and the peak of the flood was 13,000 CFS, going on 14,000!
This all gives me a much better feel for the whole flash flood thing. When our river is big, it is not just higher water, it is just plain scary. that water is big and fast! At the height of the flood, full-sized, foot-thick trees were rolling down the river at 30-40 miles an hour, I mean really moving. I've been reading a lot of Nevada history, and a pretty constant theme is little settlements along the little rivers that prosper for a few years until the next big storm and boom, you got a bunch of gravesites and ruins until the next bunch of settlers comes and takes another crack at it, no doubt wondering why such a pleasant place wasn't settled before.
The flood gave the Kayak Park quite a workout. The main channels survived nicely, but the side areas that were previously shallow sand flats are pretty substantial mounds of rocks now. Momma Nature has taken the basic idea of the kayak park and said that's cool, but let's make it more like a real river! There are a couple of really interesting new channels now, that will probably disappear as the water level goes back to normal. I look forward to sitting on those rock piles this summer and imagining the water that made them.
I think I understand the effects of catastrophic flooding on geology much better now!
from Geoff of Vinyl:
To answer your question, yes we made it back to MV ........ after a 10.5 hour drive.
Picture this:
395 south toward Carson City but detoured onto 341 east due to flooding.
341 to Virginia City then down to 50 west.
50 into Carson City whose main street was more like a river. Snail paced traffic jam.
As 50 started rising, snow started falling and within minutes we were sliding all over the place. Chains.
Got to the lake and went north along the lake for fear of staying south on 50 and having it get closed. The lake looked like the pacific off Ocean Beach.
Along lake through Incline, Kings Beach.
Over Brockway Summit (chains back on) to Truckee and onto 80.
Chains over Donner Summit. Few cars on 80 west due to the big slide.
Cruising down toward Auburn, weather was actually nice, then we get a f---ing speeding ticket. Can you believe it??
Then we hear that we can't stay on 80 because it is closed in Fairfield due to massive flooding. Radio says they are diverting everyone south on 5 to 580. We figure that 580 would become a traffic nightmare so we opt for a northern route.
We depart 80 at Davis and get over to 128 heading for St. Helena. 121 is closed due to Napa flooding so we can't dip down so we dodge about 20 mudslides and downed trees spilling into the road and go all the way up to Calistoga.
Cut across Mark West Springs Rd. to 101 at Santa Rosa.
101 south to MV where we drive straight to the club to find that all of downtown MV is pitch black with no power and not a sole on the streets and no restaurants open.
For some freaky reason, power is on at Sweetwater and we roll in the door at 9:15 much to the relief of the staff.
We actually started on time just after 10:00 and had a rocking night.
Reno had a 100 year flood on New Year's Day 1997, and then surprise! we had a 40 year flood a mere 9 years later (8 years and 364 days actually) on New Year's Eve, January 30 2005. At this great link is a 3-4 day snapshot of the Truckee's flow. If you scroll down to the paragraphs for 12.5-12 feet you'll see what we got two weeks ago.
My Mill Valley homies Vinyl played at the Green Room on that Friday night, Jan 30. They had a helluva time getting home the next day, see below. Before the show I coaxed the boys to walk down West Street to show them how high the river was. The show was excellent, and wired as I was when it was over I made my usual bad decision to have One More Beer at Tonic... (why? because I could...) So I get home about 3 AM, and I'm puttering around eating peanut butter when it sinks into my damaged consciousness that there are emergency vehicles outside, driving slowly up and down the riverside streets with their lights flashing, honking their horns, in an end-of-the-world kind of way.
hmmm.... guess it's time to move the truck to high ground. Since I'm the only one up, I am the first in my block to move my vehicle, so I get the primo parking spot around the corner! By the time I walk back, the neighbors are waking up and their moving cars and all their garage crap and getting the basement area shipshape for possible inundation. I went to bed about 6AM and even at that I managed to miss the filling of the little sandbag wall that was in the driveway the next day.
I get up noon-ish on Saturday and wow! we have a situation! Water covers the road by the river, it covers Wingfield Park and is flowing over Arlington Street! but not I am happy to say, flooding our building. I'm feeling pretty haggard from last night, but this is so special! I go out to explore the new soggy contours of my neighborhood.
All of the downtown bridges except Virginia Street are closed. On that bridge is a big ole steam shovel trying to catch logs as they get caught under the bridge - quite fun to watch. It was quite cold and too windy and wet to risk pictures with my delicate little Canon, and I felt like sh-t anyway so I repaired to my warm and dry home for a few hours.
Towards sunset the sun came out and I did do a picture-taking foray and got some great shots - the world was a reflecting pool - the reflection of the buildings and walls and trees in the water covering the basketball courts was particularly excellent.
Antediluvian observations - that's after the flood for you kiddies that missed Bible School.
The river has been high so long it seems normal. Now, two weeks after the flood, the water level has come down to about the level it was last spring when I thought it was raging. For reference, "normal" spring/summer levels is about 300 CFS (cubic feet/second), it's about 1,300 CFS now, and the peak of the flood was 13,000 CFS, going on 14,000!
This all gives me a much better feel for the whole flash flood thing. When our river is big, it is not just higher water, it is just plain scary. that water is big and fast! At the height of the flood, full-sized, foot-thick trees were rolling down the river at 30-40 miles an hour, I mean really moving. I've been reading a lot of Nevada history, and a pretty constant theme is little settlements along the little rivers that prosper for a few years until the next big storm and boom, you got a bunch of gravesites and ruins until the next bunch of settlers comes and takes another crack at it, no doubt wondering why such a pleasant place wasn't settled before.
The flood gave the Kayak Park quite a workout. The main channels survived nicely, but the side areas that were previously shallow sand flats are pretty substantial mounds of rocks now. Momma Nature has taken the basic idea of the kayak park and said that's cool, but let's make it more like a real river! There are a couple of really interesting new channels now, that will probably disappear as the water level goes back to normal. I look forward to sitting on those rock piles this summer and imagining the water that made them.
I think I understand the effects of catastrophic flooding on geology much better now!
from Geoff of Vinyl:
To answer your question, yes we made it back to MV ........ after a 10.5 hour drive.
Picture this: