Friday, August 21, 2009

Sand Creek becomes a raging river

Well, as much as a low gradient stream can rage. This is Sand Creek after a 2 day total of 6.25 inches of rain. Without a "before" picture it's hard to tell, but normally that island in the middle is not flooded.

This is the part of the stream I sampled by electrofishing about a week ago. Back then, the water in the foreground was about eight inches deep. Now it's almost to the tops of the three culverts under the road, which are about three feet high.

Here is the downstream end of the same road crossing. Last year when they replaced the culverts I thought three 3' round culverts was maybe overkill. The closest one in the photo had no water flowing through it on Saturday. A little overkill comes in handy in torrential rains.

Of course the pond is full and running out the overflow culvert. And of course, the kids left a canoe, kayak, and duck boat in the water; all are floating very low and since the kids are on vacation in Nebraska, I will be doing some bailing tomorrow.

2 comments:

R.Powers said...

Wow! Neat! All our streams are low gradient so your Sand Creek looks very familar to me.

Lynne at Hasty Brook said...

WOW! It looks really pretty though.