The River Cometh More

I remember ten or so years ago when the river flooded the property next door by the garage. There were multiple people out working for Doug building berms and putting a pump in the grease pit. There was panic everywhere. I've been spending a lot of time reading charts and graphs for water run off and snow melt dreading the same problem. Each day I've watched the progression at the boat house and have seen the river climb the stairs one at a time day after day.

At this web site I've been watching the water CFS at three locations. CFS is cubic feet per second. https://waterdata.usgs.gov/ut/nwis/rt

On the Colorado border it might show 34,000 and then at Cisco it would show 38,000 as the Delores River would join the Colorado River there carrying 4,000 or so CFS. So I'd expect 38,000 CFS to come to me 8 to 12 hours later. But once it went over 34,000 CFS at Cisco it didn't match up with 4,000 more CFS for the Pot Ash Boat Ramp three miles up river. It might only be a couple thousand more. I finally realized it was because a big chunk of that extra 4,000 CFS was flooding other properties up river from me and not making it to me. Somebody else was taking the bullet for me up river.

The river flooded onto the property somewhere south of the boat house at 35,600 CFS and topped out at 36,000 CFS later in the evening. 1 CFS is a block of water one foot high and one foot wide which equals about 7.48 gallons going by every second per 1 CFS. At the peak of 36,000 CFS were going by which is 269,200 gallons per second. I'd estimate the beach is currently about 12 to 15 feet under water.

Going over to change out laundry in the garage washer and dryer I saw the river spreading out across the property. It finally happened. It felt like a foreign intruder on the property. Was late at night and just me. Nothing I can do about it. I'll check it again in the morning and see if I need to turn the grease pit pump on to drain it.

With morning it had covered quite a bit of acreage but in short, nothing happened. Later in the day I saw all the water levels dropping from here to the Colorado border and as of a few minutes ago it was down from it's peak of 36,000 to 31,800. In retrospect I have no idea what I was so worried about the river flooding. It watered a bunch of weeds but I can't see anything else that will make a difference, perhaps a few more mosquitoes.