wwp@yahoogroups.com:
approaching limits!
Don Bain 2011-Mar-26 19:07:00
Just a reminder that this weekend is the last time to shoot for the event "Limits".
I was getting a bit anxious myself - with a long series of storms moving through California it just had not been pleasant conditions for pano shooting. And despite having thrown out a lot of suggestions for how to handle this theme, I did not have a good solid idea for my own.
But Thursday night, reading local weather news, it occurred to me that the state's rivers and reservoirs were reaching the limits of their capacity and starting to overflow.
So I set off yesterday morning for Sacramento with the magic number 27.5 on my mind. That is the river level (measured at the I Street Bridge in Sacramento) at which they open the floodgates and divert the Sacramento River into the Yolo Bypass. This is done to relieve stress on the delta levees as well as to protect urban areas from flooding.
As I approached "river city" on Interstate 80 it was suddenly obvious that the gates were already open - just before reaching the city there was three miles of open water, brown and roiled, where normally there would be wildlife ponds and rice fields.
But there was plenty of water still in the Sacramento River. The riverfront trail was partly underwater, and the trees that normally stand at the water's edge were fifty feet off-shore. It was moving fast and carrying a lot of debris.
I was fortunate because there was a break in the storm and I had just enough sunshine to grab a few panos of the high water next to Old Town Sacramento.
Happy shooting!
Don