Drone Eye View Of Skagit Valley Flood

This video gives you a good look at the Skagit River in flood mode this week. It begins with a couple fly overs of the new bridge across the Skagit which connects Mount Vernon with Burlington, Burlington being the town I grew up in. 

I believe that new bridge across the Skagit was built in less than a year. Over, as you can see, actual water.

The drone flies over the I-5 bridge across the Skagit and then heads to downtown Mount Vernon.

You get a good look at the flood wall which has now successfully blocked downtown Mount Vernon from being inundated by a serious flood.

Towards the end of the video the drone gives you a panoramic view of the Skagit Flats. You see the mountains to the east and north. You see how close Mount Vernon and Burlington are to the saltwater of North Puget Sound. Or is it the saltwater of the San Juan Islands at that location? I never thought to wonder when I lived in the neighborhood.

You will also see several islands when the drone looks west, real islands, not imaginary islands created by a cement lined ditch...

Skagit River Crests Near Record High With New Flood Wall Successful

Much of my old home zone of Western Washington is currently under water thanks to a Pineapple Express delivering an Atmospheric River.

I don't quite understand this photo from the front page of the Seattle Times, showing people on the downtown Mount Vernon Riverwalk, standing where the flood wall is.

Except the flood wall is about ten feet tall, and is not at all in evidence in this photo. 

Just yesterday Nephew Jason emailed video showing the flood wall, and commenting that he had to stand on his car's roof to see over it.

You can see that video below.

The downtown Mount Vernon flood wall is designed to install quickly by just a few installers, when the need arises. And to be taken down equally fast.

A huge improvement over the former sandbagging method of saving downtown Mount Vernon from getting inundated by the Skagit River.

The flood control wall was just part of a $25 million riverfront rebuild in downtown Mount Vernon. If I remember right the flood wall cost something like $8 million of the $25 million.

Meanwhile, there is this backwards town in Texas with imaginary flooding issues, trying to get the rest of America to pay around a billion bucks to build an un-needed flood control system in an area which has not flooded in well over half a century because of flood control levees the rest of America paid for way back in the 1950s.

I read yesterday that Fort Worth is starting the process of taking the land needed to dig the cement lined ditch that will go under the three little bridges which took seven years to build, creating an imaginary island, solving an imaginary flood control problem.

I would have thought that the land for the ditch had already been acquired. I suspect soon more classic Fort Worth eminent domain abuse will be underway, taking property for an imaginary public works project the public has never voted to support.

And people wonder why I refer to that Texas town as being backwards....

Record Storm Tips Semi-Truck On Washington's Deception Pass Bridge

Yesterday, November 15, 2021 wind, rain and flooding pummeled my old Washington state home zone. Late in the day on YouTube, via Thelma McNutty, formerly of the Skagit Valley, I watched video of a semi-truck toppled over by the wind whilst driving over the Deception Pass Bridge. 

In the video you can clearly see the hurricane like wind's effect on trees and water. The video also shows Whidbey Island's waterfront being flooded by the storm surge.

Today the Skagit River may reach a record breaking high. Last night I saw the Skagit Valley's other river, the Samish River, was also in extreme mode and two of my high school classmates had had their farmhouse surrounded. They managed to get their vehicles to high ground, but did not have enough time to rescue hay bails, which soon floated away.

Last night Linda Lou sent me video she took whilst standing behind the downtown Mount Vernon flood wall. The river looks more dangerous than I remember ever seeing it. 

The crest of the flood may top downtown Mount Vernon's new flood wall today. Seattle TV stations have been in place for two days to cover it. I can get the Seattle stations on my TV, so that should be interesting.

Nephew Jason is expected to be sending photo documentation later in the day.

And here is the video Linda Lou shot yesterday from behind the downtown Mount Vernon flood wall...

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.