Heavy Rain Issues - Anyone Seeing Flooding, Landslides?

[clearconscience]

This was some guys yard in Vanc off burton

I remember filling sandbags in 96' when I was in an Explorer SAR group.

 

[308]

The Clackamas River Road between Oregon City and Carver was closed down today around 2:00 when I tried to take that shortcut. It looked like a landslide and a large downed tree completely covered and blocked the road.

Maybe I'll get to Kayak to work tomorrow

 

[308]

LOL...look at the Prius treading water

 

[Quacky88]

Ruined a Classified sale for me....

 

[etrain16]

Ruined a Classified sale for me....

Bummer...

 

[Quacky88]

Bummer...

Yeah I already feel better after a venting self pity post...

I know some are dealing with serious issues and with more to come it's bound to get worse. I heard 3" forecasted for tomorrow

 

[Mark W.]

Hauling rock to the Eddyville bypass project on hwy 34 today we had a rock about 1/3rd the size of a fully formed VW bug end up in the middle of the west bound lane. ODOT had to come out with a decent sized front end loader to remove it.

 

[Modeler]

Hauling rock to the Eddyville bypass project on hwy 34 today we had a rock about 1/3rd the size of a fully formed VW bug end up in the middle of the west bound lane. ODOT had to come out with a decent sized front end loader to remove it.

Are they still working on that? It's been over a decade now, hasn't it?

 

[The Heretic]

I saw some precursors to flooding on my way into work yesterday - full ditches and creeks. The Tualatin is full but not over its banks, yet - won't take too much more to get it there. Most land is now saturated.

This is normal for this time of year. I've seen it worse in the 60+ years I've lived in the Pacific NorthWet, the weather just piled on and dumped on us all at once.

I have this thing about not owning a house anywhere that such rains could flood me out. I am somewhat susceptible to landslides though, and those are not uncommon on hillsides, but I am not too worried as my land has trees that mostly hold the hillside together and suck up a lot of the rain - so far. Now if we had an earthquake at the same time as the rains I would be worried.

My next property will have much more gentle slopes and I will hire an appropriate engineer to make a geological survey of it and surrounding land before I buy it, because that property will be where I build my "bunker" and hunker down for the duration.

 

[The Heretic]

 

[Joe13]

Bought a house on enough of a hill to make sure flooding isn't an issue, nor are landslides thankfully.

I feel for the people suffering and this makes me reconsider how close to the water I want to build my future dream home.

 

[bolus]

View attachment 267096

typical portland hipster

 

[mkwerx]

Oyveh yesterday was crazy. First callout of the day - guy stuck in rising water off beaverton hillsdale and Dosch. Drove past the street closed sign. Wasn't expecting to need waders, so it was a soggy day. While extricating that guy - I noticed some folks come down and I am assuming they were taking pix, maybe vid. They had the cell phones out and scanning the area... Got him pulled out and hauled away - picked up my first actual breakdown (mechanical, not mental breakdown of the driver anyway) in NW afterward, going to take it to Monmouth. Portland was FUBAR, so we took the back way. On hwy 30 in the St Johns area we had lots of water over the road, large rocks, woody debris, lots of mud. Came up Corn Pass - and about milepost 2 a landslide was blocking southbound lane. Heard half an hour later on the radio that the county closed the road totally.

On Zion Church Rd near Roy Rd, there was a nice lake covering the road from ditch to ditch. VW Jetta stalled out in my lane, and a young feller in a Camaro (didn't ask if he was Camarobear or not - didn't occur to me ) who tried passing said Jetta on the right. My customer was cool with stopping - so I unloaded his jeep and set about putting said camaro and jetta out of the pond and getting him to the side of the road.

The camaro was taking on water at a good clip - not like the titanic, but after getting him on "dry" land, he started bailing with a cup. Camaro fired back up and he was able to drive off. Jetta guy had to wait for Hillsboro Towing to come haul him off - as his car was done for. Major props to the dump truck driver who pulled his truck in behind the Jetta to give me a bit of a traffic buffer - some of the clowns continuing to plow through were impatient and couldn't be bothered to give me much working room, and some of those guys were pushing some good standing waves which made the work even wetter. Dump truck guy made it better.

Back on the road to Monmouth we didn't see anymore stuck vehicles, but boy we saw lots of new ponds and rivers. Hwy 18 at the junction with 99 was closed on the south end of Mac, as the little dip right there as 18 goes under 99 had feet of water ponded up. Sheriff and ODOT had rigs blocking the highway there.

Saw a bunch of flooded houses and barns along the way. Made me think of Vernonia and wonder if it's still there - or if it washed down the Nehalem yet.

Heater in my truck works REALLY well, so I finally dried out my pants about the time I got back to Newberg, but my boots are still soggy.

One of the mechanics we tow for has the unfortunate luck to have a house in one o the lowest areas in Beaverton - his car got flooded in his driveway, and he had a LOT of water in his house.

I am thankful that Monday is my Friday, and I'm sittin at home relaxing with my little dude today while mom's at work. We're eatin pancakes and watching cartoons right now. If the water gets too high, I'll just unhook the boat from the trailer and we'll ride out the storm like Noah

 

[The Heretic]

These kinds of events are why I advocate 4x4s with a bit of clearance in a SHTF situation.

Always have a backup plan, including backup routes.

Stuff happens. My father worked for ODOT (back when it was called the "Highway Dept."), my older brother did for a while and so does my little brother for decades. I remember my dad being called out in the middle of the night for landslides, floods, forest fires, etc. and roads being blocked or closed for days to years.

People do not realize how much and how long others work to keep the roads clear. Take those people offline and most roads would be blocked within weeks, if not sooner.

 

[mkwerx]

Yeah no kidding - as it was the county, city, and state road crews were short handed - lots of places where the road was "closed" but no one had been able to even come along and put up a sign, to warn the brainless or the bold, that the road was closed or impassable.

The first guy - Mr. drive passed the sign and into the creek - simply didn't get it. I told him he shouldn't have driven into the water. His argument "but I did it 20 minutes before and I was fine" I explained to him that you can't know, simply by looking, how deep the water is or what the road surface looks like. He didn't get it. I explained to him that flooding creeks can easily wipe out bridges, remove the pavement, create sink holes (Gresham seems to be turning into a big sink hole from the news reports), and 20 minutes is long enough for the waters to rise, and for the road to disappear under that dirty water. His coworkers (droped the dead car off at his dealership - he was a car salesman) tried explaining that to him. Finally I half jokingly told him that he needed to sell his little low sitting sedan and buy a truck if he wanted to ford creeks and flood waters.

There were a bunch of people who, at that same intersection, while I was loading up and securing that guy's car, turned onto the street (at a traffic light) and drove passed the giant black and orange "ROAD CLOSED" signs intent on doing the same thing. Most had the good sense to turn around and find another route. I stopped an elderly lady driving a similar car and warned her against driving through. "How do I get home?" I pointed out a route I guess she didn't know about - driving a block further, where the road climbs a hill, and reroute. It's a few blocks further in total but saves bigtime on repair bills (or worse). It's another case of people simply not processing things out of their norm.

The guys cleaning up the highways have their work cut out for them for sure, and with all the water we're getting, after such a dry summer, I'm wondering how many more land slides we're going to see in the west hills, and on roads like cornelius pass, germantown, or skyline? I watched a guy, I think a Portland Water Bureau guy, cleaning a grate off near Linnton, dude had balls or wasn't the sharpest stick, because where he was standing, in a heavy rush of water, I was envisioning him taking a spill then being sent off the concrete wall he was atop and out onto the highway, about 6 feet down, from the overflow. Couple of those dry creek beds, or normally trickle sized creeks were really ripping yesterday. It was both beautiful to see, but gives a good little reminder about Mother Nature's power. And that was just with a little rain. If we got rain storms like they do in the midwest, our landscape would be drastically different. Though maybe it'd wash the hipsters and prii (what else do you call multiple prius-es?) down stream.

I do seem to remember when I was a kid (not THAT long ago mind you) that we got both more snow, and more rain, than we have in the last 10 years or so. I remember having a week off from school not because of 1/4 inch of snow, but because we had a couple feet of snow. In the Hillsboro area. And that happened almost every year for a while. And the rain storms were good ones (I was always getting in trouble for going out and playing in said rain storms. I had toy boats to drive around the newly formed lakes after all). I also remember big wind storms being a regular thing, and being out in the country, power outages were a regularity. I looked forward to them actually, because the house got really quiet, we built a fire in the fire place, and lit the house using kerosene lanterns and candles. The only noise, aside form people talking, was the sound of the wind outside blowing against the house, and blowing through the big maple trees in the front yard.
Inevitably, some of the hazel nut trees in the orchard out back would be uprooted and tipped over. They have crap for root systems. But then a few days would pass, and the guy who had the contract to work the orchard would come out and buck up the downed tree, and put a new one in its place.

The global warming crowd changed the chant to climate change, because you can't argue climate change. The climate changes minute to minute, day to day, year to year, but it's all cyclical. Maybe my kiddo will get to grow up with snowy winters, wet, windy falls, and warm but not unreasonably hot summers too.

 

[2506]

Nah, this is a typical Portland hipster if I ever saw one...

 

[ZA_Survivalist]

A few of the crawlspaces Ive serviced over the last two days have been darn near flooded. Nasty stuff.

Road wise, in my neck of the woods its all been mild.

 

[mkwerx]

A few of the crawlspaces Ive serviced over the last two days have been darn near flooded. Nasty stuff.

Road wise, in my neck of the woods its all been mild.

So, were do those rodents flee too when the flood waters begin?

 

[The Heretic]

Most trees do have fairly shallow roots, if you go out and look at a fallen tree after a windstorm, the roots don't go down more than ten feet, usually less. They do hold the soil in place most of the time, but there is all that leverage above them to push them over.

I have noticed in my woods how much drier and firm the soil is (relatively) where there are trees and other vegetation than in the open areas. I am glad I only thinned rather than clear cut like my neighbors did - it keeps the soil in place and provides a wind break.

The climate has changed, and that is due to global warming. I remember as a kid how much worse the weather was in the Willamette valley from Portland down to Eugene in the places I lived there than now after moving back here from Seattle. It was much drier during the 2012 and 2015 summers, and hotter - not just my impression, but the weather records support that. I remember most years it was a 50/50 chance of rain on July 4th, and it is like the rains stop long before that now.

 

[BDA.45]

Timber Rd. about 1 north of HWY 6... Timber Rd. Is closed at 6 and at Strassel Rd. on the north end. It's gonna be "permanently" closed till we fix it. HWY 26 is the only way into Timber.....9 this morning......