A Good Rain

We had an inch or so of rain over the weekend so I finally have a collection of before/during/after pictures of water flow in the stream to post.

This is looking to the southwest corner of our yard (downstream) on July 30th -

(I think that's the lowest flow I've ever seen in the stream.)

Here is the same view in the early afternoon of September 6, after about an inch of rainfall overnight -

And this was taken this morning, September 8th -

I'm noticing that the silt layer at the bottom of the steam has been washed away to some degree.

Here is a shot of the large woody debris added to the middle of our stretch of stream taken on July 30 -

Immediately following the rain when the flow was high -

(Notice that the lower log is completely under water?)

And today -

(You can see the gravel bed that was hiding under the silt)

One more spot to show is the large woody debris added to the streambank at the north end of our yard. This was taken on July 30th also -

Here is a (really bad) photo of the same spot after the rain -

I'm afraid that it is a bit difficult to appreciate from photos the difference in silt on my white rock experiment site, but here goes. This is the before shot, on June 29th -

And this is what it looked like after the high flow from the rain receeded -

Sand and gravel revealed again, although the rocks are definitely buried quite a bit.

Here's a picture of this experiment at the beginning -

And just for a little drama, here are a couple pictures of the highest flow that we have seen, on December 3, 2007 -

This is a wider shot of that area at the north end of our yard where large woody debris has been added. The stream was flowing over the road on this day. (The picture quality is terrible because it was POURING rain and I was snapping pictures very quickly for the sake of protecting the camera)

This is a wider view of the southwest corner of our yard on 12/3/07. For orientation, that cedar tree that is in the middle/top of this photo is the same tree that is in the upper right corner of the photos at the beginning of this post. To the right of it in this photo you can see where the water flow knocked out part of our fence. I forgot that happened...