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Prod
Trad climber
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Sep 15, 2013 - 04:03pm PT
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I have a friend who has been flying around with the National Guard. He said that the Left Hand road Has lots of similar damage. His estimate is Months for the repair.
Prod.
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bhilden
Trad climber
Mountain View, CA/Boulder, CO
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Sep 15, 2013 - 04:24pm PT
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Re: Prod's picture of the road in Left Hand Canyon.....
The creek runs parallel to the road there and not under it. So much water just washed road away. Holy crap!
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Edge
Trad climber
Boulder, CO
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 15, 2013 - 04:28pm PT
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The rain has been easing off a bit and cloud cover lifting in the hills just west of Boulder. It looks like the sun may burn through within an hour. Hopefully this will be the end of the deluge.
I spent a bit of my morning pulling up 400 square feet of waterlogged carpet and padding from the slab in our living room. With a fire in the fireplace, the slab is finally drying and the mildewy smell is dissipating.
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Sep 15, 2013 - 04:37pm PT
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I remember the SoCal flood of 1969, when it rained several inches every day for like a month straight. Something like 100 people were killed.
Time will tell if this one's as bad as that one, or not. I hope not.
My Grandparents told me of the 1937 flood in SoCal, which turned the Santa Ana River into the Santa Ana Wash.
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nature
climber
Boulder, CO
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Sep 15, 2013 - 04:38pm PT
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Prod - did you get beer?
Edge - let's meet up sometime soon. Maybe the cruiser ride so you I can share some sushi with you.
We'll get through this. Boulder peeps are badass.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Sep 15, 2013 - 04:54pm PT
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It's still raining in Longmont though not as heavily as this morning when the St. Vrain river was rising 7 inches every 15 minutes.
What strikes me as most serious while looking at all the aerial video footage is not the dramatic scenes from the mountains but the extent of the flooding on the plains. Currently in Longmont I am in an unflooded area but every road out of here in all directions is flooded. The major north south interstate is closed for over 70 miles. The railroad which supplies coal to the electric plants is also washed out.
I went grocery shopping on Friday night and got gas, but there were already empty shelves and all the major gas stations were totally empty. A few more days of isolation and it could get really bad.
I live about 7 blocks to the west of the left edge of the photo. On the left you can see some of the railroad tracks that are flooded and to the east why we have no access to the interstate and Boulder or Denver.
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SteveW
Trad climber
The state of confusion
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Sep 15, 2013 - 05:04pm PT
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That's an amazing shot, Callie.
No coal comin' through for a good long while. . .
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bhilden
Trad climber
Mountain View, CA/Boulder, CO
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Sep 15, 2013 - 05:43pm PT
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Edge,
here is my carpet removing tip(though admittedly a bit late). What I did was cut the carpet into 2'x4' pieces and then rolled it up. I then stood the carpet up end-wise and allowed gravity to drain all the water out of the carpet. Amazing how much lighter the carpet(and padding) is without being water-logged. Also, since my carpet and padding was in the basement, I was able to get all the crap out and through the first floor living room without creating a big, wet mess since it had basically dried out.
BTW, the backing of my nylon carpeting was so rough that my fingertips feel like they just went through an extended bouldering session at Castle Rock.
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Sep 15, 2013 - 06:03pm PT
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Paging Mr. Noah.
Please report to the landing stage immediately.
Paging Mr. Seth...
[Click to View YouTube Video]
Praying for you all.
Noah kidding.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Sep 15, 2013 - 06:38pm PT
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Man, this looks super bad.
Flooding is by far the biggest killer with regards to weather. Tornadoes are down the list behind lightning.
I'm sure that FEMA is already there. They were in Oklahoma the day after the tornadoes ripped through. That one caused over a billion dollars of damage, and comparing the two, this one looks much worse, at least as to how many are affected.
It will take a long time to fix those roads. You could put two road building crews on each road and it will still take months to fix. This is going to be a long haul for Colorado.
I couldn't believe Jan's shot looking out on the plains. That is a huge amount of water, and although the winds weren't too strong, the flooding cost a lot of lives. It was like a mini Katrina and I was on it for NSSL.
Hopefully the loss of life will not go higher. Don't dare try to drive through running water on a road. It takes very little to float you off and into the abyss. After Hurricane Floyd, I couldn't believe how many cars were floating next to a main 4 lane divided highway outside of Wilmington. That hurricane dropped a massive amount of water.
On a financial note, insurance usually doesn't cover floods. You have to get a special flood policy. A lot of people are going to lose everything because of this. FEMA and the feds will issue loans, but I don't think they will pay you for your house.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Sep 15, 2013 - 07:02pm PT
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Regarding flash floods...
Have you ever wondered how those big rounded boulders in mountain stream beds got there?
When I was doing my summer of field geology before graduating, we had a lot of rain dump upstream of our group of cabins just down from Canon City. It didn't even rain where we were.
There was a small trickle that ran through camp, and that thing came up to a roar in no time. You could hear the rock cobbles knocking into each other as the water moved them downstream. It was impressive seeing the power of fast moving water.
The principal of catastrophic events comes into play. You can have a hundred years of stream flow that barely changes the stream bed. Then you have one of these 100 year events come through and 99% of the stream morphology is shaped by that one short event.
I've been watching the radar loops, and each day the upslope flow has been building stationary thunderstorms all day long. They are worse in the evening. It is amazing how much water vapor there is in clear humid air. All of that water vapor is turning into rain. I haven't been following this closely, but I assume that the humidity has been unusually high. I need to talk to my meteorology prof friends.
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Sep 15, 2013 - 07:08pm PT
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Humidity has been from 94-100% that I've seen. (Currently 94%). FEMA is here - links to register are in the Daily Camera. Some friends who have dealt with them already weren't impressed ("your property is not graded properly - no way we'll cover"). In a way, it was like being wrecked by a big fat hurricane, except getting it with zero warning.
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Evel
Trad climber
Nedsterdam CO
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Sep 15, 2013 - 07:31pm PT
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Hello from Nederland. We're high and dry up here but can't get anywhere due to all the roads being washed out. So that's an issue. Still raining. Really horrific event. And to think, we usually spend our worrying on wildfire. Haven't talked to him, but Tarbuster ought to be ok as his place is above town on a hill.
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Fletcher
Trad climber
The great state of advaita
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Sep 15, 2013 - 08:04pm PT
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BASE104 wrote:
> Have you ever wondered how those big rounded boulders in mountain
> stream beds got there?
And:
> You could hear the rock cobbles knocking into each other as the water moved
> them downstream. It was impressive seeing the power of fast moving water.
Yes, about 7 or 8 years ago the wash in Eaton Canyon (near where I live in Altadena, CA) was full on in flood, draining a decent chunk of the San Gabriels. Nothing unusual to get a couple of times a decade. I was not present but a friend showed me video he'd made of the wash. You could hear the boulders clunking around against each other, very clearly.
As a docent in the natural area there, while in the wash (when it's just a trickle or disappears, of course), I like to point out these boulders of varying sizes from bowling balls up to hundreds of pounds and note that it wasn't LA Country Parks and Recreation that put them there!
Lots of opportunites to see strata of alluvium as well. And that's created by decades and centuries and beyond of build up from winter flows.
The power of a it all is mind-boggling. Really helps hit home the impermanence of things.
Wishing the best for all the folks in Colorado in addition to all the Taco folks in the area. Big appreciation to you guys who are helping out like Nature, BN and CR and those I've missed!
Eric
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goatboy smellz
climber
Nederland-GulfBreeze
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Sep 15, 2013 - 08:14pm PT
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Glad to hear you're ok Eric. Nederland has weathered this storm pretty well despite a few roads washed out and the houses near the creek were evacuated early on in the deluge so no loss of life just a lot to clean up.
The only way in and out of town is via Black Hawk and I 70. Boulder canyon, Magnolia road, Sunshine and Left Hand Canyon are all closed down.
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wilbeer
Mountain climber
honeoye falls,ny.greeneck alleghenys
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Sep 15, 2013 - 08:30pm PT
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Ron,i know,and ive even kayaked boulder creek,i lived there.
Did not want to alarm,but i have a bunch of friends there and one sent me that.
Thats all .
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Sep 15, 2013 - 08:39pm PT
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Geology revealed: a continuous strip of sedimentary bedrock, more than a thousand feet long, cutting through (not along) strata underneath the volcanic caprock on North Table Mountain, has been exposed by this week's rains. I can't think of another exposure like this in the region; these rocks are normally buried deep under sediment. Of interest to local geologists?
That's solid bedrock, not mud, all the way down the hill in this direction, and all the way up in the other.
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SteveW
Trad climber
The state of confusion
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Sep 15, 2013 - 10:21pm PT
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Here's a link to Mike McHugh's blog--he's the ranger at Eldo that
organizes and does most of the trail work there.
There's supposed to be a cleanup coming up this coming Saturday,
September 21 from 8 am on. . .
http://eldoprt.com/
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