Sunday, November 14, 2021

Pineapple Express Atmospheric River Deluging My Old Washington Home Zone


A Pineapple Express, also known as an Atmospheric River, is currently dropping a lot of water on Western Washington. I can not remember if it is in an El Nino or El Nina year that a tropical air mass gets over heated and over saturated with water, and then heads north to drench the west coast.

My Favorite Nephew Jason (FNJ) emailed the photos you see above and below, arriving in my email inbox this morning.

I believe the above photo shows the current Skagit River status in downtown Mount Vernon, while the below photo shows preparations for the disaster flood of 1995..

The text in the email from FNH---

FUD -

We are still on high alert here in the valley.   The 1990 and 1995 floods were at measured depth of over 37 feet in MV.

Projections for Tuesday evening's depth are for about 36 feet in MV.

I believe the below flood photo depicting the old sandbag method was from 1995.

Hope you are high and dry in Texas. 

-FNJ


I think the 1995 Pineapple Express is the one that sank one of the Lake Washington floating bridges. I remember watching the late night news out of Seattle. They broke in live from Mount Vernon, showing a lot of people filling sand bags by the downtown library. Showing servicemen from the Whidbey Navy base helping. Asking anyone who could do so to come downtown to help.

And so I woke up the house and we headed to downtown Mount Vernon. I had never seen anything like it. So many people feverishly working in emergency mode. Soon I was part of  a brigade passing sandbags to be stacked in a long line to attempt to stop the river from flooding downtown Mount Vernon, which, when the Skagit is in flood mode, downtown Mount Vernon is like New Orleans. As in it is below the level of the river.

By about three in the morning the sandbag wall was complete. I went home, then returned to downtown Mount Vernon ahead of the predicted 11am crest of the flood. People were blocked from entering the downtown area, but you could see the river, and downtown, from the hills due east of downtown. If I remember right I was on the old Highway 99 bridge which crosses I-5, along with a lot of other people. 

Around 11am you could see the river reaching the top of the sandbag wall, and seeming to start to spill over in spots.

And then, suddenly, the river backed off, retreated, about a foot. People were collectively thinking and saying what the hell just happened.

Within an hour or so we knew what had happened. A dike had breached down river, a break of a couple hundred feet. This quickly flooded Fir Island. An actual island (not an imaginary Fort Worth, Texas type island) made so due to being surrounded by two branches of the Skagit River. 

The Fir Island disaster triggered all sorts of emergency action, including loud sirens. Soon we were seeing things like cows being rescued by helicopter. As in a cow in some sort of harness dangling from a helicopter. 

Before the Fir Island dike breech could be fixed, and before the Mount Vernon sandbag wall was taken down, two weeks later it happened again. Another flood, this time easily re-flooding Fir Island due to the broken dike.

I remember when it was eventually allowed driving around Fir Island seeing the destruction. I'd never seen anything like it before.

There were a few more floods where a sandbag wall was used to protect downtown Mount Vernon. And then it was decided there needed to be a better solution.

A better solution to a real flood problem, not a goofy incompetent solution to an imaginary flood problem, such as what I have witnessed in Fort Worth for a couple decades now, expecting the rest of America to pay a billion bucks, or more, for what the Fort Worth schemers claim is a vitally needed flood control project, but is, in reality a corrupt money making scheme geared to line the pockets of those foisting the project on the public.

Meanwhile, in Mount Vernon, Washington, it was decided to build a new flood control system, a temporary wall which can be installed in a few hours by a few installers. Not an army of sandbaggers.

That is the new flood wall you see in the photo at the top. It is part of Mount Vernon's rebuild of its riverfront into a sort of riverwalk. If I remember right this cost around $25 million. I don't remember what the funding mechanism was.

Likely there was a bond election with the public voting to support the project. I do know this flood control project began well after Fort Worth began its inept Trinity River Vision's imaginary flood control project, with the Mount Vernon flood control long completed, whilst the Fort Worth "vitally needed" imaginary flood control project to control floods in an area that has not flooded in well over a half century due to flood control levees already installed, had basically not even started, with nothing done other than three simple little bridges built over dry land, taking seven years to build, with the hope that one day a cement lined ditch will be built under the bridges, creating an imaginary island, and providing that vitally not needed flood control.

Fort Worth expects federal funding to pay for its not needed flood control. To that end a local congresswoman's unqualified son was given the job of being executive director of the project, to motivate his mother to get that federal funding.

Eventually it became obvious the congresswoman's son was inept at the job he was being paid well over $200,000 a year to do no one knows what, the congresswoman's son was moved to a new job, where he could do no harm, still paid that ridiculously high salary, while a person actually qualified to oversee a public works project was hired.

I am almost 100% certain that no local politician's son, or daughter, was hired by the Skagit River Vision, to motivate that politician to secure funding for the Skagit River flood control project.

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