New Missoula flood guidebook published.

On the Trail of the Ice Age Floods: The Northern Reaches, by Bruce Bjornstad and Gene Kiver, is now published. The book directs readers to field sites in the the Channeled Scablands and into northern Idaho to see evidence for the mind-boggling late-Pleistocene Missoula Floods. There are hikes, road trips, and even two aerial field trips.  The book is a sequel to On the Trail of the Ice Age Floods: A geological field guide to the Mid-Columbia Basin by Bruce Bjornstad. A description of the new book is available at the publishers’ website:

http://www.keokeebooks.com/northernreaches.html

It will take a while for the book to be distributed to all the retail outlets but for those wanting it right away, it can be obtained from the Sandpoint Online General Store at: http://www.sandpointonline.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=228

King Tides – request for photo documentation

January 23, 2011 - 9.6' king tide at the mouth of Whatcom Creek, Bellingham. December 2011 kings will be the same height.

Washington State Department of Ecology is asking citizens to submit photos taken at high tide during the upcoming ‘King Tides’ – the winter highs. The system used last year appears to have been improved and simplified. Use the DOE’s time table to determine the times and dates. The idea is to document high water now, which will serve as a reference baseline as climate change raises sea level. If the weather is blustery, tides may be even higher as winds pile water against shorelines.

Go to the Department of Ecology’s King Tide website for instructions. Find when to take your photos, and come up with a good site you would like to document at the time of highest tides. Take the photos, and then upload them to the King Tide Photo Initiative Flickr Group (photo storage and display) page. If you visit the Flickr page, you can search for specific locations to see where photos were taken last winter during this event. The most practical sites are those that have ‘improvements’, or where something is in the works, vs a wilderness or undeveloped shoreline.

Geotagging photos

Last year, many people could not upload there photos because they had not been geo-tagged [assigned coordinates using GPS], or the Flickr website did not recognize tagged photos and rejected them. An example is the one above. A new system is in place this year which may fix this problem, by allowing you to drag your uploaded photo to the proper location on a map on the Flickr site. Note- you must have, or make, a Flickr, Google, or Yahoo account to do this. Full instructions are on the King Tide website. They say this:

“3.Add your photos to this group! Watch these great tutorials created by British Columbia to learn how to upload photos to Flickr, how to “geotag” them (identify where the photo was taken using Flickr’s map) and how to add them to a Flickr group. ‘

Slides close Chuckanut Drive; high water on Chuckanut Creek (video)

Chuckanut landslides

The small rockfall about 1 mile south of Clayton Beach Trailhead, Dec 12, 2010. Pretty dinky, but potential for plenty more in this weather. Click to enlarge

The annual round of landslides has begun along Chuckanut Drive (Washington Highway 11). The road was closed yesterday evening  due to the first rockfall of the season. I just returned from an effort to get photos.

The road is closed to southbound traffic 1/2 mile south of the Clayton Beach trailhead; the rockfall I saw is about another 1/2 mile further south. I found a small pile of rocks across the road at about mile post 13.5. It is not by any means an impressive slide, but there is a report of another one further south. I couldn’t verify that. No sign of clean up efforts yet. I didn’t tarry- there were a number of head-sized rocks on the road behind me, and I didn’t want to become a headline. Quick photos and I was gone. A story I wrote last year about the geology behind these annual events is posted here.

An understatement on Chuckanut Drive.

Chuckanut Creek

Water is high and muddy in Chuckanut Creek as it races through Arroyo Park at the southern edge of Bellingham. Worth a look-see if you are wanting an excuse to get out on this wet day. The stream gage at the footbridge says 3.5 feet. This is not by any means an epic flood, the water is not even over the trail (yet) but fun nonetheless. The high water ought to flush the last of the stinking fish carcasses out of the creek, at least. A video I took of high water in the creek is posted here on YouTube.

Chuckanut Creek is boiling and muddy at the Arroyo Park footbridge.