November 24, 2004

Deluge Blogging

We normally get a good chunk of rain during November but... I have a recording weather station at the farm and we have accumulated almost 4.5" for today. We are fine but getting into Bellingham might be interesting: bq. WAC073-251047- 954 PM PST WED NOV 24 2004 bq. NOOKSACK RIVER BASIN... bq. NOOKSACK R AT DEMING FLOOD STAGE: 12.0 FT. LATEST READING: 14.2 FT AT 09:30 PM WED. bq. FORECAST: MODERATE FLOODING IS OCCURRING. NEARING CREST AROUND 1 AM AT 14.8 FEET. BEGIN FALLING TOMORROW MORNING. bq. AT 13.5 FEET...THE NOOKSACK RIVER WILL CAUSE WIDESPREAD FLOODING DOWNSTREAM THROUGH LYNDEN...WITH SWIFT WATERS COVERING SOME FARM LANDS AND ROADS. EROSION MAY DAMAGE SOME RIVER BANKS. The Nooksack is the main river in our area (our two creeks feed into it) and Deming is the first major town between here and Bellingham. My Mom and Dad drove into Bellingham today to come here tomorrow for Thanksgiving dinner. I think I may take the truck in to see how bad it is. One other thing that will be interesting to watch -- there is a section of the main highway (SR-542) that was having problems with erosion. A bunch of enviros got the state to anchor tree 'snags' at the shoreline to help build up sediment and slow the process. It will be interesting to see how well they survive. Anyway, we have a great little Generator (Kubota 5500 watt with electric start) and none of the buildings are leaking -- wood stove is heating up my studio nicely so we are snug. As I said - deluge blogging. Worst case scenario, I can start building an ark. Now where is my Cubit measure... UPDATE: Here are the readings for the last month for the Nooksack River at Deming. The data comes from this website: U.S. Geological Survey
nooksack-deluge.gif
Note that the scale is logarithmic and that today's peak is at 50 thousand Cubic Feet per second where the last big peak (early November) was only 20 thousand. The little triangle thingies represent the averaged stream data for the last 62 years of known data collection. Posted by DaveH at November 24, 2004 10:36 PM