Bankfull Flood on the Haw River, North Carolina

There is abundant evidence of a bankfull flood event on the Haw River, upstream of Bynum, North Carolina.

Let's see what the USGS Gauge at Bynum says.

 A gauge height over 11 feet counts as a flood...and it is more than 7 feet above current flow.  Note that this is a very wide river, so the actual volume was much more than 7 times...according to the USGS calculation, the flow was near 20,000 CFS, over 30 times the current flow of 600 CFS.

How does the compare to previous floods?

This January flood appears to be a bankfull event that was surpassed in 2008 (the first year of record for Bynum), 2009, and 2010, (but not in 2011 or 2012).  Many of these large floods happen in the early spring, perhaps when the heavy rains fall on an already-saturated watershed.

This is what happened the week of January 13th.  On top of the previous week's rain, there was significant rain on Monday the 14th and Wednesday the 16th.  The storm continued into Thursday, bringing more than an inch of thunderstorm rain (and snow) on top of the saturated landscape.  The Haw river flow peaked soon thereafter, in the early morning hours of January 18th.

A New Conception of My Home-Watershed: the Gila River Basin

It took me three years of living and traveling extensively around Tucson to understand the local watershed. I grasped early on the basin and range topography of parallel North-South mountain ranges, but these ridges served to confuse rather than clarify the overall drainage, since I did not know how the meandering rivers and dry washes of the bottomlands connected. Some went north, others flowed south. Where was the continental divide? Where did they meet the sea?

It was only by fortuitous circumstance that the last year found me exploring the full scope of an area I finally recognized as my home watershed. I new conception of the Gila River Basin emerged from these vast peregrinations, a new understanding of the lay of the land and a meshing of medium and large scale aspects:

The Sonoran desert in Arizona exists in the Gila Basin, surrounded on three sides (north, east, and south) by concentric rings of grassland valleys and mesas, woodland hills and forested mountains. The Gila, which rises on the continental divide to the east (in NM), is joined by tributaries from the north and south, representing, respectively, the Mogollon Rim divide and another divide which roughly approximates the U.S./Mexico border.

This general schema is interrupted, of course, by the basic and range, which further divides ecotones and watersheds, creating a kind of comb effect wherein numerous drainages flow parallel before their confluence with the Gila. The Gila itself is also indistinct, since it virtually disappears in an amorphous wash in the middle of its basin. And, since it flows through sparsely inhabited parts of the countryside, it is even easier to ignore its central role in ordering the landform. Most people living in the large metropolitan areas of Phoenix and Tucson do not realize their place along the cusp of the Sonoran lowlands, or the importance of the placements of their cities at the ecotone divide between grassland and desert, where rivers [used to ] bring water from the mountains before evaporating in the desert. [Theoretically,] the Gila eventually flows into the Colorado, before that crosses the U.S. Mexico border, reaches its estuary, and flows into the Sea of Cortez (Gulf of California). The Colorado rises from the western rocky mountains and the high colorado plateau to the north of the gila basin. To the south, in Mexico, streams flow directly off the Sierra Madre into the Sea of Cortez, without joining together in a large basin such as the Gila. To the east, on the other side of the continental divide, are the Chihuahan desert and the Rio Grand. These areas combined form the Southwest, and a large part of three out of four of the N. American deserts.

Upper Rio Grande Watershed: Rio de los Pinos to Conejos River

Flanked by the Conejos River and Rio de los Pinos, this watershed includes Pinorealosa and Osier Mountain, along with many excellent creeks (named and unnamed), alpine meadows, and river bottoms. Controlled burns and selective logging seem to be keeping the woodland open and healthy, while fire or beetles have left enough dead and downed timber to create unnavigateable thickets, quite conducive (necessary and sufficient) for unfragmented, Wilderness landscape.

Thin, filamentous, and/or deeply pinnatifid leaves, everything with prickles, spines, or a dense covering of hair (tomentous) -- but not many poisonous. Hairs serve to insulate as well as defend. ... In the wetlands, poisonous and fleshy plants dominate. Elk and bear, fire and grazing, Rorippa, Mimulus, Penstemon, Geum, myriad rodents scurrying away in all directions, fawns hiding breathless in the grass, hellebores and corn lilies, the 'Umbel of God', ululation, mountain thunderstorms...

The coastal fog of California, gentled by a 1,000 miles travel. I heed the thunder, and elevate the advent of rain above dull annoyance. This morning, I climbed the cliffs above our campsite. When I reached the top I felt like crying. Don't know why. Looking out over the watershed I understand the pattern. All water runs downhill. There is a band of trees from a lower line where it is wet enough to grow to an upper line where it is too cold to grow. There is a line in-between those two, above which precipitation exceeds evaporation. All rivers originate above this line, in their Headwaters.

I was always thinking of new, clever, ways of getting ahead of Nature, ahead of myself, beyond lightspeed and Saturation, entropy, Capacity. Rainbows multiplying from the first: Asgaard, Bridge to Heaven. But why does it curve back to Earth? Everyone sees a different shape and distance, depending on their perspective. The kind of rain mosquitoes can still swim through to sting. Lightening and that particular sound of the thunder rolling off of the peculiar and idiosyncratic topography up-valley.

But what if the world refuses to be ordered by the human mind? We know honeybees can be trained to show preference between human faces, but will they ever understand them? Then how too will we ever understand our world? Words are useless if we rely on them to a fault, if natural variation is continuous and nonlinear, yet we expect it to conform by our contingent, evolutionarily-derived logical architectures and cognitive biases.

On the backbone of the continent, the Genesis of the Southwest; a looking-glass world, mountains in every direction, but the brooding presence of the Great Plains felt in the passes opening between. At times we thought we were in Kansas, or safe away in our beds dreaming, but we were in the San Luis Valley, ripening in the sun.

You have driven up and down the mountain valleys, the flanks that lead up from below or down from above, the highways and streams of rivers and clouds. You have stood, still, in the center of the valley, under Blanca, for days. Transfixed interest, blossoms like dollar bills in the breeze. You have climbed high up where there is more air than land, yet still cannot seem to breathe enough and the mountain says enough and the Thunderstorm says Enough and you flee their mutterings and grumblings

Storms billow on surrounding mountains, then range over the landscape. Powerful rain, thunder and lightening on into the night...sigh... San Juan rainstorms. The next day the storms grow but, despite our hurry to avoid them, only blow for early Evening Entertainment, and on into the night. Next day, storms brush by, delivering a soaking with bits of hail mixed in. These storms build on the San Juans, blow low over the valley --but nothing can slow them until the Sangres, where they slide silently up the crest, lick their salty skins, run a tongue along sharpened teeth, and watch the wounds of mankind's world.

Where have all the willows gone? The heart of the landscape dug out, munched, passed, trampled dirt. The magic and will to live that flowed wild, healthy, worshipful. Destruction AND Growth. Unsimplified. Wet, unique.

All land in the West is "wetland"; fear not. Although nothing fits into categories anyway, each consciousness, attuned to an unique understanding, attempting an unbiased account of who-knows-what for someone else. Under the roof of the world, wet with the aspen, the carex, and the rivers; mountain ridges diverge until they peter out, rivers seek their breathren and converge until they become one with the ocean. Flowing water flows together - it lubricates itself; whereas water soaking into sponge, expands -- it flees the mutual weight of multitude.

Oh now gentle rain, Conejos River hopping along...who understands?

Upper Rio Grande Watershed: The Poso and Los Mogotes

"...driving across these llanos for days, solitary pinon and juniper gnarled and twisted and thickened, like baobobs almost, and the antelope / gazelle bounding away, outdoors dawn to dusk , khaki outfit, pith helmet, driving across the plains for days, looking at the summits; heading toward them but then it starts to rain and the mud becomes too thick: fishtailing across the road, saying 'I'm sorry' to all the plants, the erosion. Eventually, the sound of the engine turning off, the door opening, both feet sinking deep into the mud, the finality of the car door slamming in the sudden, rainy, darkness.

Rock Garden in the Serengetti

Wetlands: those areas that are saturated or inundated with surface or groundwater at a frequency or duration sufficient to support -and under normal circumstances do support- a prevalence of vegetation typically adapted to life in saturated soil conditions.