The Daily Bucket is a nature refuge.
We amicably discuss animals, weather, climate, soil, plants, waters and note life’s patterns.
We invite you to note what you are seeing around you in your own part of the world, and to share your observations in the comments below.
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What happens when we get an inch and a half rainfall on land that isn’t supersaturated? Puddles.
What happens when that same inch an half falls on snow pack up in the high country 20 miles north?
The rain started around 6 AM and just came down in a slow steady pace until 9PM. By the time the sun went down, none of it had started to run off. It just soaked right in. This is what a normal winter storm does around here. But with El Nino conditions, there is a trend that leads to this,
What happens over large areas of the west in a El Nino event, is that one storm will be lined up after another, yet one will be warmer. This drops rain on the snow pack, creating floods that are bigger than they should be.
Then the next storm will be colder dropping more snow, only to be washed away by the next warm one. And so we get more floods.
The most extreme example of what can happen is the story of the town of Thistle, Utah in the spring of 1983. It’s not there any more.
Here in our little town of Cornville, Arizona, we are blessed to have Oak Creek flow down from Sedona and the Mogollon Rim. I’ve long joked that we should rename it Tomato Soup Creek, because that’s what it looks like in a flood. And that happens fairly often.
Here’s a photo of our town park, that normally has lush green grass.
The red sandstone that dominates the canyon that Oak Creek starts in is very easily washed away. Tons of sediment come down with every storm, creating sandbars everywhere the current isn’t strong.
These two pictures are of the place we call Mormon’s Crossing. Great fishing, swimming, hiking and some fun tree swings, it’s more of an old Mountain Dew commercial than what you saw on T.V. There’s a creek level bridge across here, where in normal condition, the water goes under the road in culverts, maybe a foot below the road surface. It gets closed with every flood, but there’s always yards of silt that have to be removed.
I like these floods, as they flush out the debris and deposit new all the drift wood into one place, making it easier to hike along the creek.
The creek is normally about twenty feet wide at this point. I have a friend that lives in the creek bottom. He did a good job of putting in swales to keep the water from coming in his door, but his driveway was under a foot and a half of water this morning.
The road through town was closed as the county scrapped off the silt. They just reopened it as I went by on my way to work. We have decent levee system through here, but the irrigation ditches and Artisian wells can play havoc sometimes. But we never seem to risk lives or have a bunch of property damage. My friend told me 20 people had to be evacuated from along Beaver Creek, 10 miles away.
We have two more storm slated for next week, starting this Sunday. Temps in the 30’s and .60” predicted here, so the high country will get a bunch more snow and we will do this again in a couple weeks.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
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What’s the nature news in your neighborhood?
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