It all started with record high temperatures bringing all of the rivers in our neck of the wood up suddenly. Then we started breaking all sorts of stream-flow records, records over the last 80 years, some of which had been in place since 30's. The next step was that the records were exceeded by 1000cfs. A few nights ago the Salmon river topped out at 7000cfs more than double the previous record!
Torrential downpours from some thunderstorms prompted the National Weather Service to issue a flood warning for the Big Wood. It reached 5.84 only .16" from flood stage.
Although the rivers are still mighty and muddy, things have mellowed out a bit because we have returned to normal late April temps of the low 30's at night and the 50's in the daytime. Looks like the flooding threat is over for now.
The big question remains, however, of what will happen when run-off normally occurs, in late May to early June. SWE show miserably low snow packs, but if you look up into the mountains, a lot of snow has to come off yet. One has to remember that the SNOTEL sites are located in the 7000-7600' elevations, and that snow is now gone. It will take much higher temperatures to affect the snow pack above that, but, if it rains a lot, or if temps rise into the 80's, we could still see high water a little later on.
Here is the graph of the Salmon from last week to current and below that the gauge height of the Big Wood for the last week to today
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