Seeing that sign at Bowman Park on Monday afternoon, what comes to mind is: “You think?”
“How high’s the water, Momma?” Johnny Cash asked in 1959. And the answer was: “Five feet high and rising.”
On the Willamette River in Albany on Monday afternoon, the correct answer was: “Nearly 20 feet and not rising much more.”
At least that’s what the National Weather service said. The river forecast called for just above 21 feet on the Albany gauge on Monday evening. Then the river was expected to fall to 14 or 15 feet by Jan. 2.
At the time I took the photos included here on Monday afternoon, Dec. 30, the river was flowing at the rate of about 59,000 cubic feet per second.
There’s about 7½ gallons of water in a cubic foot. I’ll let you do the arithmetic if you want to know the flow in gallons. Suffice it to say: That’s a lot of water.
The river had come up a foot or so since the day before, completely surrounding the new stage in Albany’s newly rebuilt Monteith Riverpark.
The base of the stage is built of concrete, so don’t expect the thing to float away. (hh)
By Monday afternoon, the concrete stage in Monteith Riverpark was surrounded by water.
Hey, I was the one in the black SUV that stopped to say hi and to tell you I read your posts. After saying good bye to you, I continued down to the park. There was a gentleman sitting and fishing. We started talking. He said the river level had gone up about 3 inches since he first arrived. I called the city and told them the river was over its banks and on the road. It’s always amazing to see the river when it’s that high and flowing that fast!
At one time, mid to late 70’s as I recall, the water was so high in Bryant Park that a log, all limbed and about 30 feet long, ended up resting on top of the restroom. It seems that it was there for over a year before the Parks Department got it down.
I miss the old historic high water mark signs on the stage.