PNW Flood Watch - Dec 8-12, 2025

We have some big fields up here where they spawn, their habitat pristine and unspoiled...

Run was late, but today they were full on bobbing around in pre spawn behavior.
 
We have some big fields up here where they spawn, their habitat pristine and unspoiled...

Run was late, but today they were full on bobbing around in pre spawn behavior.

Also very encouraging to witness the humpkins successfully navigating through all the new I-5 culverts. Once they just bobbed helplessly at the entrances with no hope of safe passage. Now they float through in seconds with hardly a scratch. Hats off to WSDOT!
 
They got all they up to Center Valley, where the habitat remains unspoiled, except for the Trustifarians from Port Townsend that make their pilgrimage to the pot shop, and then tend the organic farm fields adjacent to the spawning grounds. When the air is still, you can hear the dub step, and see the brightly colored tams through the haze of smoke.
 
On the bright side, I'm seeing a ton of late season humpkins migrating out to the salt. Run looks strong.

View attachment 174343
At first glance, those appear to be of hatchery origin....probably best to catch and kill so as to not dilute the wild population.
 
Those don't all look wild to me. Looks like some hatchery genes got mixed into the gene pool. Probably why they are struggling to find appropriate migratory and rearing habitat.
awe crap, ya beat me to it!
 
Just caught up on the Skagit prediction updates. Looks like it could be pretty damn bad.
I was here when the record was set in 1990. If not for the dike breach below the forks it would have been much worse. We lived out on the flats in west Mount Vernon and drove over to the dike at the ball fields. There two rows of sandbags on top of the dike and one of them was under water. We turned around and could spot our house. Lucky for us there was a couple of barbed wire fences protecting us. :)

In 1995 we were on the hill where we live now in the Clear Lake area. Got trapped here for a day and watched the propane company launch a jet sled and go out into the fields and capture bobbing propane tanks around some of the farm houses. They dragged them over to the telephone poles along side the submerged Francis road and tie them off for later retrieval.

The bridge on hiway 9 over the East Fork Nookachamps Creek was blocked off. The water was up to the bottom of the bridge with high rolling waves flowing swiftly in the wrong direction and filling up the valley area around Beaver Lake.

In the 1990 flood that happened in November there were reports of Chums jumping in Clear Lake as the flood waters reached it for a day or so. A few weeks later as we walked through a field to get to the Stilly you could see Chums with their face peeled off from trying to hold in the current of muddy water. The entire river stank from all the dead chums hanging in the trees.

After this week there will be some new rivers to explore.
 
2006 was brutal. The Snohomish punched through the French Slough levee and then flooded back UP the OLD Skykomish valley right to the edge of our Fryelands neighborhood in Monroe. Luckily, they built the whole neighborhood about 2' above the regular elevation.

My neighbor & I decided to duck hunt the flooded field to the west. We literally WALKED out from our houses. This is before the elementary school was there.
We both had a dozen decoys and our shotguns. I didn't bring the mutt since we knew he would have to float the whole time. I'm sure our other neighbors were not amused. 😁

There were mice and spiders anywhere it was dry, which was pretty much just tall grass and fence posts. It was creepy. I don't remember shooting so no ducks for us.

Snohomish was a mess. Hopefully the levees and dikes hold this time!
I'm an idiot. The 6 part got me I guess. 😁
The levee fail that we experienced in Snohomish & Monroe was in 95-96. We moved out of Monroe in 2003. Winter of 1995-1996 was a wet one!
 
I'm an idiot. The 6 part got me I guess. 😁
The levee fail that we experienced in Snohomish & Monroe was in 95-96. We moved out of Monroe in 2003. Winter of 1995-1996 was a wet one!


The 2006 was the record setter for the Sky at 129,000CFS, had hw2 closed at Bering with water on the road, water up to the road at eagle falls. Split rock was smooth water no wave at all, Index was evacuated with water over Galina road at the train trestle. water was 2 feet from the bridge over the Sultan, water was up to Bank of America and Wigal creek was backed up to hw 2 as well.

This one will get a few more feet but under 90k.
 
That is a shit ton of water coming down those two forks. I lived in a medium bank cabin between the forks and Index thru the 90s and went thru that decade of high water events. As I kid I was in Index the day after the 80 flood when the town lost half a dozen homes, the land they were on and the street with the homes on the opposite side becoming riverfront. The forks up there become monsters once the Gold bar gage gets around 100 cfs. Gonna be alot of nervous people in the valley tonight up high and then all day tomorrow and tomorrow night down low as that water pushes out.

I hope the new forecast is wrong, all the best to everyone living out on these systems and/or adjacent. All those dikes and levees will be maxed.
 
G7z-ZlfaIAA-HfP.jpeg
 
The 2006 was the record setter for the Sky at 129,000CFS, had hw2 closed at Bering with water on the road, water up to the road at eagle falls. Split rock was smooth water no wave at all, Index was evacuated with water over Galina road at the train trestle. water was 2 feet from the bridge over the Sultan, water was up to Bank of America and Wigal creek was backed up to hw 2 as well.

This one will get a few more feet but under 90k.

Would be funny (not really) if Galena Road washed out again after all the work put in.
 
Back
Top