No rain all day.

Ewan and I went into town today. The water level was way down, though it was still much higher than we are used to. To illustrate just how terribly high it was last night watch this:


(a much nicer version of the video can been seen here)

It didn't rain here all day. Unless there is a deluge tomorrow I think we are out of the woods.

Spared the Worst?

Ewan and I are gonna go into town and have breakfast at Bubba's, assuming they are open. It should be interesting to see.

http://cbs5.com/local/Bay.Area.storm.2.638503.html

Looks like we got to see the peak last night. Which means that the worst that happened downtown was water coming out of the man holes.



Rain is in the forecast for this afternoon, Sunday, Monday, and maybe Tuesday. Stay tuned.

The rain stopped

The water level is going down. It's almost below 'critical flood level.' G'nite.

Creek level

Flood Photos

At about 8:30 Ewan and I piled into the car and went for a drive to check out the the creek. We drove towards downtown and were able to park in the Creek Park parking lot. Lots of other people were there to see the spectacle. We were all being disaster tourists. It was really astonishing to see. At the north end of Creek Park the creek comes out from under a "bridge" that has some restaurants and shops. It was as high as the bottom of that bridge, which means it was probably choking the flow so it might have been overflowing it's banks just up stream of there. I don't know, downtown is closed and evacuated. I took some pictures with my new camera. It was pretty hard with the low light and an umbrella in one hand. Some of them turned out okay.

This photo shows the water coming out from the underpass at the North end of Creek Park. There are stairs under the water right at the bottom of the frame. Ewan and I often walk down those stairs to throw rocks into the creek. The water here is at about 13 feet. Critical flood level is 11.14 feet.


(Nikon D40, focal length 31mm, F4.5, 0.62sec, iso 1600, handheld
ps: cropped and unsharp mask)



This photo is looking North at the bridge that crosses from Creek Park to San Anselmo Ave by Michael Feldman's Gallery.


(Nikon D40, Focal length 18mm, F3.5, 1/2sec, iso 1600, handheld,
ps: unsharp mask)

Click on either photo to see full size.

FLOOD!

The flood alarm just sounded. San Anselmo Creek has hit flood stage. I hope the shop owners are prepared.


Downtown Evacuated

Interesting Visits to my websites

I use this really neat service called statcounter.com to help me interpret all of the data logs I get from visitors to my website. Most of the visits to benefield.net are people who are looking for the songs/chords I have posted there, though I am always surprised at how many visits I get from people googling my name. I get a fair number of short visits to this blog from people who googled for "train animation" or "model train bart." I know that my site isn't what those people are looking for. Sorry.

It's fun to peruse the statistics and see if I can figure who is visiting me. (If you think this is a little big brotherish you should realize that all websites can gather data about visitors) Of course I usually can't tell exactly who is visiting my websites, just where their ISP is located. Some of my family and friends, I recognize their ISP name. Some times I get hits from Wasatch Meats. I know who that is. But more often than not I can't even guess.

I used to have a link to my email address so visitors could leave me a message but not anymore. Spammers use programs called "spiders" to "crawl" the web looking for things like someone@website.bla. They then "harvest" the email addresses and that email gets buried in mail. At one point I was getting over 200 spams a day in the email I had listed on my site.

I am currently working on making a comment form for benefield.net. Of course this is a stretch for me and my mid 90's era html skills so it might be a while. Of course people can comment easily by clicking at the bottom of any post on this blog.

In the mean time I have added another email link on my homepage. I created a special email just for the purpose so my main email won't get flooded with spam.

Anyway I'm dying to know who from the BLM in Aurora, CA and who from Moab, UT visited my site this week.

Calm

It's been calm for a while. The creek was down by a few feet when I took Ewan to see it at about 4:30. The bridge re-opened at 2:30pm. 101 re-opened at 11:30. No flooding in downtown San Anselmo. There is supposed to me more rain on Sunday.

More rain news

The CHP closed the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge at 8:30am because a truck overturned. The bridge will be closed both directions until at least 10PM! Highway 101 is closed at the 580 interchange because "debris from an interchange under construction blew onto the freeway, the California Highway Patrol said." That'll be closed until about 5pm because they can't start cleanup until the wind slows. The local bus system shut down entirely because of the freeway closure and apparent flooding in San Rafael. The only good form of transport right now is feet. Well feet wearing rubber boots. Luckily it is supposed to stop raining at about 4pm. Stay tuned.

San Anselmo

The downtown shops seem to be as prepared as they are gonna be. Lots of them are closed. Lots have their inventory cleared out. The creek is really high but it has a way to go before it spills it's banks.

My camera is not working well at all. The sensor seems to be going dark. Sure it's cloudy but it's the middle of the day and I was using 1/2 second exposures just to get an image! I'm bummed. My phone takes better photos now. I wish I had a work camera here.

It's like swimming out there. I had all my goretex ski gear, my sorels, and my hat so I stayed toasty and dry. I'm gonna have lunch and go back out.

At the weather station on Red Hill, it's rained 2.47" today and 1.77" yesterday. That makes for 4.24" since it started raining at about noon yesterday.

My phone doesn't have a signal right now.

How High's the Water Papa?

You know it's 6 feet high and risin'


Local weather conditions can be checked here.