The Water is Still High…

Just sharing some pictures we took today... Click the pictures to see an enlarged version....

My Mom came by this morning to visit and drop off some things that I’m borrowing for a bit to help me with a move I'm making.  After showing her the place I'm planning on moving to we decided to take a drive up the river to see how some of the marinas are faring with the high water. My daughter and grandson decided to come along too, so we all piled into my car and headed up river on the levee road.  The first marina upriver from Meridian is Lovey’s Landing.   All that area you see under water is normally filled with trailers and campers.  Fishermen and women usually live there year round to be close to the fishing.  One of the folks who has been living at Lovey’s is now staying with a friend across the street from me here in Meridian.  From what he told me and another friend, he's planning on renting a house here in town rather than moving his trailer back up to Lovey's when the river goes down.

One of the trailers didn’t make it out of the low area before the water level came up...

Most of the rest of the RVs and trailers got pulled out of  the low area to the levee road.. They'll sit there until the water goes back down and the ground dries a bit..

The next marina upriver is Ward's Landing, and as you can see from the picture, they've got the river in their yard too.

 Check out the angle the ramp to the dock is at.. The ramp normally follows the slope of the levee down and across to where the docks usually are, but with the high water, the ramp goes up, bends in the middle and then down again to the dock which is almost at the same level as the higher part of the parking lot.

Just upriver from Ward's is what is usually a dirt parking lot where folks store their boats, RV's and other equipment... All we saw was one lonely sunken boat trailer.

As we drove up the levee road, we looked out across some of the farmland that is underwater... It's not deep, but there are acres and acres under water right now.

The water fowl in the area are loving the high water.  We saw dozens and dozens of snowy egrets wading in the shallow water or flying away from the noise of my 4x4 on the road.  My daughter got a few really nice shots of the birds out the passenger side window.

The trees in this orchard must be terribly confused.  They're in full bloom and absolutely flooded by the Sacramento River.

See that long black thing out beyond the small trees on the "shore"?  It was rushing downriver with the current.. Tree?  Long support beam from something?  We don't know, but after seeing lots of trees, limbs along with that thing floating down the river, no one needed to wonder why there aren't any boats in the river.

The next marina (and the last one we drove past today) is the Colusa Landing.. Just a couple weeks ago, my Mom,  my granddaughter from Utah and  I were there for lunch.  They had sandbags at that time, but not like they have now.  And there wasn't water in the parking lot beyond the restaurant then, either.

I walked down near the water to get a picture of the deck on the river side of the restaurant so my granddaughter can see what it looks like now... When we were there, the water wasn't even close to the restaurant.  Today, however it's close.. And there's evidence that the water has been even higher.  The spot I was standing to take this picture was under water just a day or two ago.

 There's no access to the docks at Colusa Landing right now.. The water is just a wee bit deep...

Well, that's the end of the "tour" for today... After leaving Colusa Landing and the Steelhead Lodge, we headed on in to Colusa in search of a late lunch, which we found... And then back home for all of us...  Hope you've enjoyed the tour of our flooded river!  I may have to do another tour once the water goes down and life returns to normal... Hmm.. Yeah, that might be a nice thing to do with my granddaughters when the granddaughter from Utah comes back to visit this summer.

The Water is High………

Living alongside the Sacramento River is pretty good most of the time.  Until we get a wet winter like this one.  The streams and rivers are all running high right now..  Today, I took advantage of a break between storms to walk over to the levee to see how high the water is with my own eyes.  And to take a few pictures.. Of course.

And.. Yeah.  The water level is pretty high.  Flood stage on the Sacramento River in this area is at 70’ and according to the California Department of Water Resources website, right now the river level is about 67’.   Thankfully, the water levels are supposed to drop a little on Monday or Tuesday..  So far, from all reports that I’ve heard and read, the levees along the Sacramento River are holding up pretty well.  When the water is high like it is now, the levee districts have people patrolling the levees looking for any problem spots..  The reason the river is running so high right now is that Shasta Dam is dumping lots of water because Shasta Lake is uncomfortably close to capacity and the snow melt hasn't even begun yet.  It's the same situation on the other rivers in the area.  The Feather River is running high because Oroville is dumping water.  The American River is running high as well because the dams upstream are also making room for the snow melt.  Last week I read in one of the Sacramento papers that the summit of the Sierras had received something like 57 feet of snow and it was still snowing.. Hard.  Well, it's still snowing up there today and has been almost constantly for the past week.

Anyway, I thought I’d give you a couple pictures to compare.  Keep in mind that the photos are taken from opposite sides of the bridge and during different seasons…   The first picture was taken this afternoon and the second one was taken last June when CalTrans did a test of the mechanism that opens the bridge.  (Yes, it's a "draw" bridge, it just happens to be on a turntable.)

 As you can see from the pictures, the water level is pretty different between the two.. Be sure to note the difference on the bridge support below the up-rights on the structure.  (Sorry about not getting a shot from the same side of the bridge today.  I tried to go up on the South side of the bridge, but it was too muddy and too slick.  I didn't really feel like crawling up the side of the levee on my hands and knees.. So I used the access road on the North Side of the bridge.. You can see it in the picture below that shows both the river and the road.)

As I stood there watching the water flow past, I spotted a tree (Or the remains of a tree that fell in the river somewhere upstream.) coming down towards the bridge so I waited a bit to see where it was going to go... Under the bridge or get caught on the bridge supports.  This one went under the center span, but it's common for trees, limbs and other debris to get caught on the supports.

It's hard to tell in this image how much higher the water is than the road.  My estimate is that it's about 10 to 12 feet above the road surface.  All over town, the low areas have become pools of water that are seeping in from the river.  Including my own yard.  The back yard is mushy and I don't live right next to the levee.  The "joy" comes this coming week.  The sun is supposed to be out and the weather is going to warm up.  The river level will go down a foot or so, but the seepage puddles are still going to be there.  What does that mean for the little town of Meridian?  Mosquitoes!  It only takes a few nice days to hatch out scads of the pesky insects.  Oh "joy".

The Meridian Bridge

saSince there's no activity in the Mario Lozano trial this morning, I thought I'd post a few photos of the bridge here in Meridian. The bridge goes over the Sacramento river and is a rotating bridge so that river traffic can go up or down river. There isn't much river traffic that warrants the bridge being opened, so periodically the state will "test" the operation of the bridges that go over the river here and elsewhere. The first year I lived here after retiring just happened to be the time when the Meridian Bridge was due for a test. There were a lot of us from this little town who went up on the levee to watch the bridge turn. They even piled kids from our little school on buses and brought them over to watch the bridge. There were even a number of CalTrans workers who stood with us on the levee to watch because they'd never seen the bridge open.

Here's a shot of the bridge when I first got up on top of the levee. Getting to the top of the levee was a bit of a mess. The test took place in late November, so the river levels were a bit on the high side and everything was muddy. You can see a couple of the state trucks sitting on the bridge if you zoom in on it.



In this view, you can see a lot of the state workers on the bridge where it "breaks", including one guy on the platform below the road surface. The bridge is just beginning to open.





 
The bridge is swinging open more now.. And there are 3 guys on the platform below the road surface.









Here's more of a closeup of that last view taken a couple minutes later.










And here we are a few more minutes later, you can see where the bridge has turned enough that it has cleared the road edge.









And the bridge rotates some more. You can see an orange pickup on the bridge, along with some of the workers. You can also see some of the guys standing on the road edge on the Colusa side of the bridge.






Now we have a straight-on view of the bridge as it rotated. If you zoom in, you can see there are two vehicles on the bridge along with the workers. And you can see the guys still on the platform below the roadbed on the Meridian side.






It's almost open now...











Yup, the bridge is open now. They didn't hold it open for very long. Just a minute or so, then they swung it closed again.

Then all the school kids got back on the bus and the rest of us folks who climbed the levee to watch the bridge wandered off back to our homes.



I can remember years ago coming up to Meridian from Southern California to visit my grandparents who lived right next to the levee. It was a different bridge back then, but it was still a turntable type bridge. (The current bridge was completed in 1976.) But, I can remember sitting in my grandparent's house and hearing a horn blast. Grandpa would get up and head out the door with all of us right behind him. We'd climb the levee behind the house and stand up on top and wave to the guys on the barges and tugs as they went up river. The kids thought it was a pretty nifty event. It's been a long time since they stopped using the barges to carry cargo up and down the river. But, the bridges are still there, all along the Sacramento River. The drawbridges and turntable bridges still operate, but now it takes a call 24 hours in advance to get them to open.