Friends Landing … warning, high water!

June, 2020

You may remember that, in a recent blog post, we talked about the “surge plain” of the Chehalis River and that I reported seeing a number of road signs that warned of high water. One day I drove on a back road that went right through, right over a portion of the surge plain. I took photos of the area and of the warning signs posted along that road.

Let me show you where I was and what road I was on when I took these photos.

I took the Google Earth image above off the internet. The red heart in the lower right corner is the campground. On this one particular day, I had been exploring interesting things on the north side of the Chehalis River and off to the west of the campground (way to the left, off the image above). At the end of my adventures, I chose to take a small back road to return home to the campground, to see what I might see on that small back road.

On my way home to my trailer, I drove on Central Park Drive at the top of the photo above. Eventually, I would turn right at Alder Grove and then head down to the campground. But before Alder Grove, you can see that a long portion (about two miles) of Central Park Drive was built right on the surge plain. As the road dipped and entered the surge plain over there on the left, the road signs with warnings appeared. The sign at the beginning of this blog post was the first sign, then others appeared.

There were several signs along the way. I especially liked that very first one up above … “TURN AROUND DON’T DROWN”. Seemed like good advice to me.

The road was long and straight and flat. The surface was cracked and broken in many places and had obviously been repaired many, many times. Since it floods many times throughout any given year, that’s not surprising.

There was no other vehicle traffic on the road when I was there so I stopped at this little waterway that was right next to the road. I wanted to see how far the pavement was above the water level. Based on that tree trunk lying across the waterway, I estimated the pavement was about 3.5 feet above the water.

Back in the truck, I drove on down the road until I saw this bridge (below). I pulled over and parked … making sure the truck was on a solid, gravel surface.

I walked around a bit and explored as much as I could, but the ground just past the gravel was very soft … so soft I started to sink in, just walking! So I walked backwards very slowly and very carefully.

But before I backed out completely, I took the photo below of the side of the bridge. The red arrow points to the roadway/pavement surface of the bridge. I estimated that, from the top of the water up to the surface of the road on the bridge, the distance was about 4.5 feet.

The height of the tide when these photos were taken was about 6 feet. The highest tides during June 2020 were about 10.5 feet. If you add 4.5 feet to 6 feet, you get 10.5 feet. During those normal high tides in June 2020, the water will be licking the top of that bridge, and the road on either side of the bridge will be under about a foot of water.

In winter months, the highest predicted tides can reach 11.5 feet. At those times, the bridge would be under 1 foot of water, and the roadway would be under 2 feet of water.

Keep in mind, that’s the predicted water level height based on predicted water flow in the river and the predicted tide height from the Pacific Ocean. This does not take into account higher than average ice-snow-melt from the mountains to the east in some years, and it does not take into account a storm/wind coming in off the Pacific Ocean from the west. When all things converge in diametrically opposite directions (increased water flow from the east and high winds from the west), then the surge of saltwater from the ocean enters the picture. During those times, the water level in the Chehalis River and the surrounding surge plain can reach 12.5 feet, or more. That bridge would be under two feet of water, and the roadway would be under three feet of water! This surge plain is also known for extreme high winds during Pacific Ocean storms … turn around, don’t drown!

I was very happy to be here during a relatively low high-tide.

I continued on down the road towards Alder Grove with no mishap. It was a very pretty drive. Small birds were everywhere. It seemed they were all talking at once, what a wonderful sound.

When I was almost to the campground, I crossed one more bridge and slowed down as I crossed it … and stopped quickly at the sight below.

There were at least three large families of Canada Geese gently floating down stream, all of them chatting amiably with each other.

The photo above shows the area of the waterway with the Geese when the tide height was about 6 feet, about midway between low tide and high tide.

In comparison, the photo below shows that exact same waterway at low tide. Quite a difference.

And, last but not least …

After that drive across the surge plain, I started noticing that almost all homes built close to or on the surge plain were built higher than usual, like the home above. Later in the week, I asked about this manner of building homes and was told that the space under these homes is not used for anything … it’s not a basement. If the dark green siding around the base of the home above were removed, all you would see are several dozen huge pilings that hold up the house.

But then later I began to wonder about the cars and trucks parked beside homes like the one above. In a major flood, that little white car would be under water, and would be ruined. The engine would be full of water, the electrical system would be soaked, the interior would be a muddy mess, etc. I’m surprised no one here had garages that were built higher. Hmmm, I wonder why not.