Tag Archives: Atmospheric Rivers

WAITING ON A BLUE EVENING

Posted on February 19, 2024 by John | 3 comments

Despite the advance of new scientific instruments utilized for weather modeling, this year’s Atmospheric River phenomenon for Central California hasn’t followed predictions. However, we have enjoyed beautiful weather and average rainfall standing currently at 10 inches with March and April yet to go. Last summer seemed cooler, fall and winter warmer with yesterday’s high reaching 71 degrees.

Robbin snapped this photo about the time the deluge was forecast to arrive yesterday evening, but it didn’t start raining until 3:00 this morning. I love the rainy days, almost always smug when the experts are wrong.

3 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal

Tagged Atmospheric Rivers, forecasting, photography, rain, weather

Atmospheric Rivers Clean-Up

Posted on January 24, 2024 by John | Leave a comment

With a couple of “burn days” between rain showers this week, we’ve lit the piles of debris and deadfall that settled here where the canyon widens that were brought down with last spring’s atmospheric rivers. With air quality a concern in the San Joaquin Valley, burn days can be hard to come by. Not only are we reducing hazardous fuel in the event of a wildfire, but eliminating the limbs, mostly sycamore that burn quickly compared to oak, we saved our watergap fences between pastures and neighbors when Dry Creek rises again. Lastly, we’ve eliminated a potential logjam at McKay’s Point where part of the Kaweah River is diverted to the St. John’s fork that ultimately passes north of Visalia.

GETTING SHORTER

Posted on July 29, 2023 by John | 2 comments

I don’t recall Dry Creek ever flowing into August, as springs continue to feed this morning’s 9 cfs (cubic feet/second). March’s atmospheric river estimated 8,000 cfs, that scoured the channel and undermined the gauging station, left few places to cross the resultant boulder fields and cutbanks. Only now, as our cattle work winds down, do we have time to address some of the impacts of last spring’s rains.

Both for vehicles and cattle, I had to move our crossing downstream. Moving the big rocks was rough work for the skid steer, but I had all the materials I needed in the high water drifts of sand and gravel to smooth the crossing this morning—less than a three hour job. On the way to the corrals, hoof action of our replacement heifers will smooth it a little more.

We’re looking forward to September when the cows begin to calve, another month of a hundred degree weather that often extends into October, but the hot summer days are getting shorter.

2 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal

Tagged Atmospheric Rivers, CREEK CROSSING, heat, photography, rain, skid steer, summer, temperatures, weather

AFTER ATMOSPHERIC RIVERS

Posted on July 11, 2023 by John | 7 comments

The magic remains along the creek

spread wide with naked cobbles pressed

together, exposed by flooding sheets

that ripped its sandy banks before

leaving the channel changed—

a landscape rearranged for the moment!

A summer gurgle, herons and egrets come

to wade abandoned pools of pollywogs

shrinking into moss-covered gravel.

Green cockleburs rise-up from ribbons

of sand, high-water veins bleached white

until colored or carried away with the burrs.

The truth is endless here—it will keep

saying the same thing in different ways

well after we are gone.

7 Comments

Posted in Photographs, POEMS 2023, poetry, Ranch Journal

Tagged Atmospheric Rivers, cobbles, cockleburs, photography, poetry, rain, truth, water, weather

Atmospheric River Repairs

Posted on May 9, 2023 by John | 1 comment

The grass has turned while we’ve been busy repairing our fences in order to sort and ship our calves to town. Because the brush catchers upstream failed to hold all the debris, our pipe fence across the high water channels when the creek was flowing 8,000 cfs (cubic feet/second) collected what leaked by until it was overwhelmed.

It’s been a slow process, but neighbors and friends brought their hydraulic muscle to stand it upright Sunday morning in a couple of hours. We had to cut it in sections and finished welding them together yesterday.

Thanks to all concerned.

1 Comment

Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal, Video

Tagged Atmospheric Rivers, Dry Creek, hydraulic muscle, neighbors, photography, pipe fence, rain, weather

THE GRAY DAYS

Posted on March 14, 2023 by John | 2 comments

Every day is a holiday

when you can’t remember

what day it is—

when you can’t leave the driveway,

can’t leave the blacktop,

when it’s too wet to plow

for weeks at a time

as the creek rises and falls

with Atmospheric Rivers.

The finches bring branches

of dry debris, Roadrunners

chaunt solicitous love songs

despite the divine disasters

that temper mortal urgencies

a week away from the Equinox.

2 Comments

Posted in Photographs, POEMS 2023, poetry, Ranch Journal

Tagged Atmospheric Rivers, cabin fever, Dry Creek, Mother Nature, photography, poetry, rain, weather

Damages Between Storms

Posted on March 11, 2023 by John | 7 comments

Another 1.58″ in the last 24 hrs., 2-day total 3.79″, forecast of 4+” through Wednesday, 3/15.

Both sets of brush catchers caught hell and will have to be replaced. Eroded far bank, widened channel.

2. Pipe fence we recently built to the creek acted like a brush catcher and is lying flat.

3 & 4. Culvert on Ridenhour Creek couldn’t handle the flow, wiped out fence and gate braces.

Lots of hillside sloughing on Dry Creek Rd, plugged culverts everywhere. Road closed. Greater damages to surrounding roads and small towns, Woodlake, Exeter, Elderwood.

We’re fine.