The River Rises

And Rises... And rises.

This is the Sacramento River in Sacramento this afternoon, about 3:30pm. Since Sunday, the river has been rising due to massive releases of water from Folsom Dam, Nimbus Dam, Shasta, Yuba, and a few other dams in the state. It is striking to see this much water. I haven't seen it this high since 1997, when I was house-hunting here in the Sacramento area. It is an awesome sight. And concerning. Although the flood control folk say that this is ok, it still makes a lot of us think about the flooding that has occured here in the past.


This second shot is the I Street Bridge, taken from the Tower Bridge. The water is nearly at the level of the bridge.








BTW, 31 feet is flood stage.

If the water rises further, I will post more pics. We are expecting more rainfall tonight, tomorrow, and Saturday. Monday is the next storm after that. Most of this runoff is in anticipation of a lot of water coming from the mountains, since these have not be cold storms dumping a lot of snow, or they have melted the existing snow that was there last week. But some is due to the rain here in the valley.

For those who know the area, Northgate Blvd at Hwy 160 is under water now. The bike path in this shot is literally at the water line. The water has gone over the bike path during high tide today.







This last shot is from Discovery Park. This is the south entrance to the park, off Richards Blvd. Now, keep in mind, Discovery Park does get intentionally flooded during times like this. It is an intentional flood plain. But the sight of this road just disappearing into the water is surreal.