Thursday, January 8, 2009

Floods and other disasters

My farm is located on river bottom land, surrounded by a dike. The area was diked off from the main river channel around 1900, and since it was diked the area inside the dike has subsided about 5 feet.

That means that now, if the dike fails, the water will be 8-10 feet deep over my farm, and probably for a period of three to four months.

The usual flood season is November, with 8 out of the last 10 major flood events happening then. This year however we've had two major flood events. One in November, with a peak level of 30', and this one.

The river is forecast to peak at 33-34', which could potentially be bad for me. At 32-33 feet the river may overtop the levee.

Once the river overtops the levee it takes 8-12 hours to flood the area to 8-10', but once it's deeper than about a foot you can't move vehicles in or out. So I'm watching the river level today, and may have to evacuate the farm.

Here's a link to the gauge for the area of the river nearest me.
Snohomish river at Snohomish, WA

And my dog monster was hit by a car yesterday, apparently trying to cross the road to get to the dog park. His hip was dislocated, and it looks like to fix it will be expensive. Joy.

The animals are all doing fine; the fields are soggy, but they've got plenty of feed and shelter. Will update as the potential flood situation unfolds.

2 comments:

MMP said...

I hope you are surviving the immenent adversity. I looked at the gauge and it didn't look good. I hope you have managed to take measures to safeguard what you can.

-mmp

Anonymous said...

Bruce, we hope you and your animals are ok, we had a lot of flooding challenges today ourselves, and see now that ebey island has a levee breach tonight. Thinking about you!
Michelle & Kirk in Snoho