Preparing for Summer Floods: Should We Buy Amphibious Vehicles?

[wolram]

The summer floods are back and with rain forcast for the next three days things are going to get interesting, may be we should be buying amphibious vehicles.

 

[Evo]

Here it is below zero F and more snow. I've never seen so much snow and so many days below freezing. We're really getting hit hard this year.

 

[binzing]

Yeah, we've had a really cold week. Got an "unofficial" record of -7F but it was colder outside the city.

 

[wolram]

Here it is below zero F and more snow. I've never seen so much snow and so many days below freezing. We're really getting hit hard this year.

how are you coping?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

We have about a 200% normal snowpack in the mountains. If we get a warm weather system from the south that melts the snow all at once like we did in '96, we can expect severe flooding. The floods of '96 were 500 year floods. We had another 500 year flood two years later.

Our creek's flow is normally between 30 and 100 cubic feet per second, but in '96 I estimated the flow to be about 300 cfs.

Here is a shot from above during normal flow [second photo], and another take down at the creek's edge during the flood. At that point our twenty-foot creek was about two miles wide. The flooding in the field all originated from approx. a ten-foot deep flow about thirty feet wide entering our property. From there it jumped the banks and flooded the entire area. We still have tree stumps on the property that weigh at least 500 pounds that were carried in by the flood.

http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/3641/floodsandsnowsmpn1.jpg

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

I was just in London for 7 days and it rained for 6 of them.

 

[arildno]

The summer floods are back and with rain forcast for the next three days things are going to get interesting, may be we should be buying amphibious vehicles.

It's a dismal, grey island. Whatever is it good for? Ireland, at least, is green.

 

[lisab]

wolram, I hope your house isn't in a flood-prone area.

I never realized how much mood is affected by the environment until I lived in Fairbanks, Alaska. 20 hours of dark, for months on end...it really tweaks the brain chemistry!

But that experience helps to make the dreary Seattle weather seem tolerable.

 

[wolram]

It's a dismal, grey island. Whatever is it good for? Ireland, at least, is green.

True, it is a plot of land sinking in the weight of humanity, when there is only 1 sq meter per person we are going to burst open and take over the world.

 

[lisab]

True, it is a plot of land sinking in the weight of humanity, when there is only 1 sq meter per person we are going to burst open and take over the world.

...again

 

[wolram]

wolram, I hope your house isn't in a flood-prone area.

I never realized how much mood is affected by the environment until I lived in Fairbanks, Alaska. 20 hours of dark, for months on end...it really tweaks the brain chemistry!

But that experience helps to make the dreary Seattle weather seem tolerable.

I am lucky to be living on relatively high land, however the land is saturated and over night fields become lakes and the lakes cross roads, The weather does get one down, what is it called (sad) or some such.

 

[turbo]

I just came in from clearing up the snow that had slid off our roof and froze to the concrete patio in front of the house. Ugh! Like chiseling concrete. We have had almost no snow for the past 3 years or so, and so far this year we have gotten well over 5 feet. Luckily, there was a mild thaw and some rain a couple of weeks back that took the levels down a bit. This may be a tricky spring if the snow-pack holds, and then we get a couple of days of heavy rain. That situation caused a devastating flood on April Fool's day of 1987. Here's a link - a slide-show is linked under the initial image. We lost bridges and roads, as well as dwellings. Our town of Skowhegan was cut in two by the damage to bridge abutments and roadways, so if you had to get to work on the other side of town, you might have to drive 20 miles out of your way to use whatever roads and bridges were still passable.

http://centralmaine.mainetoday.com/floodof87.html

Here is what the snow looks like after settling at least a couple of feet during the warm weather earlier. There is a LOT more snow in the mountains, so a sudden warm wet spell could cause the Carrabasset and Sandy Rivers to jump their banks, and downstream from where they feed into the Kennebec, there would be damaging floods. With the very unpredictable weather we've been having, that is a real danger.

 

[hypatia]

Bitter, deadly cold here tonight. CUDDLE ALERT!

 

[binzing]

how are you coping?

Fine, thanks for asking. I mean, I know of a few people who have slipped and fallen on ice, etc. There was a thing in the newspaper yesterday (www.daily-times.com) about a drunk freezing to death, but that's the first death in this area so far due directly to the cold. Don't mean to sound like a jerk, but there are so many drunks here (predominantly Navajo) that no one will really notice.

 

[hypatia]

We had a lady freeze to her fence overnight. It seems she was taking the trash out with slighty damp hands and grabed onto the fence. We had a howling, gusting wind most of the night, so I'm guessing no one heard her.

 

[Evo]

We had a lady freeze to her fence overnight. It seems she was taking the trash out with slighty damp hands and grabed onto the fence. We had a howling, gusting wind most of the night, so I'm guessing no one heard her.

That's horrible! Sounds like how I will end things.

 

[f95toli]

It is really warm here is London. 14 degrees C in the middle of the night is apparently a
new record for Januari.

 

[brewnog]

Been in London this weekend, it's been ridiculously warm!

 

[Math Jeans]

The rainy season here in Phoenix ended a few weeks ago, so its been pretty clear. Also, temperatures are constantly around the 80s. I have no idea what it must be like for the rest of you.

 

[turbo]

The rainy season here in Phoenix ended a few weeks ago, so its been pretty clear. Also, temperatures are constantly around the 80s. I have no idea what it must be like for the rest of you.

Go back a page and look at my house. It's 13 degrees F outside and diving fast. We'll probably see -5 or so tonight.

 

[binzing]

You Phoenecians (sp?) aren't humans. Seriously, how do you deal when you have to go somewhere that is actually affected by weather?

Turbo, don't you live in Canada? Thats amazing that we are having colder temps than you.

 

[turbo]

You Phoenecians (sp?) aren't humans. Seriously, how do you deal when you have to go somewhere that is actually affected by weather?

Turbo, don't you live in Canada? Thats amazing that we are having colder temps than you.

I'm in Maine and we have some extreme temperature ranges.

 

[wildman]

It's a dismal, grey island. Whatever is it good for? Ireland, at least, is green.

Here it is nice and warm, but at least its brown...

 

[hypatia]

Right now -2 F or -18 C and there is still the wind to contend with. Even the pups refuse to go out.

 

[turbo]

I thought of hypatia's post just briefly today. I went out to refill my large cylindrical metal bird feeder with seeds, and my skin was damp because I had just finished doing the dishes. My skin stuck to the feeder, though I was able to pry my hand off without losing any skin. At least the feeder is removable, so I could have taken it into the house to thaw if necessary. It would have been pretty embarrassing getting frozen to something that was firmly attached to the house, flagging down passers-by for help.

 

[ECStoner]

No snow here, but my bf is stuck across the other side of town at work with a rather large flood in between us...

 

[Evo]

We're supposed to get more snow in a few hours.

 

[hypatia]

I thought of hypatia's post just briefly today. I went out to refill my large cylindrical metal bird feeder with seeds, and my skin was damp because I had just finished doing the dishes. My skin stuck to the feeder, though I was able to pry my hand off without losing any skin. At least the feeder is removable, so I could have taken it into the house to thaw if necessary. It would have been pretty embarrassing getting frozen to something that was firmly attached to the house, flagging down passers-by for help.

Plus the ribbing from your wife, Honey is that a bird feeder in your lap or are you just happy to see me?

 

[turbo]

Plus the ribbing from your wife, Honey is that a bird feeder in your lap or are you just happy to see me?

Well, counting the pointy copper cap, it's over 20 inches long, so she couldn't have used that one on me. I did get a bit of a flash-back (your post and Christmas Story), thinking "STUCK! STUCK!"

 

[joeyar]

This thread makes me glad I am not enduring the winter now. And even in the winter it rarely snows here (Hamilton, New Zealand).