Today's Field Trip

Before I get into the details of the latest storm, I wanted to tell you all that my photography blog has received a delightful face lift.  Check it out and tell me what you think.

We woke up this morning and decided to go check out the swollen rivers around Hurricane.  It's been raining since last Thursday and I'd been told the river near the Interstate Rock shop was pretty high.  When we got there it was a magnificent sight.  Not that flooding is good, but it was incredible to see that much water.  It flooded like this a couple years ago and some homes in Virgin sustained a lot of damage.  Back in Jan. 2005 there was even more flooding in Southern Utah that destroyed many homes.  Maybe I was too young to care before that, but it seems like before 2005 there hadn't been storms and flooding like this for a LONG time.  For the 11 years before then that my family lived in Southern Utah I just can't remember this kind of stuff.

I snapped a few pictures of what we found.  Most were around the shop below Brentwood and all were taken midday December 21.  This post is taking on the nature of a documentary, but its kind of like a journal entry so let's all enjoy the fact that our posterity might appreciate these details.  :)

 This is similar to what you can find all over town.  Full gutters with a steady flow.

 Usually the river is more like a large creek through here.

 You can see how the road is completely flooded as with much of the yard.

 Notice in the upper left just passed the Jeep and in front of those couple of people standing in the road that the white bar across the road is the gate.  It is still in place.

 I've done photo shoots in this area before and its usually dry as a bone.

 This is the view from the west side now.  This is the sight that was so incredible to me.  The people are standing near where I was pointing out the existing gate.

 But... it's gone now.  Notice how the bank was sloughed off and the beam is sticking up out of the water a little bit.  Within 10 minutes they brought a track hoe up to try and fish it out but it was long gone.

 It's impossible to show the scale of how enormous this tree was that was floating down the river.  It was huge.

 The authorities came by in the morning and downed this power pole because it coming down was inevitable.  You can see the track hoe in the background forging his way through the road/river.

 A close up of the same portion of river.

 This was taken up in Virgin, not even a mile passed the Staples' homes.

This was at Sheep's Bridge in Virgin.  Marshall's favorite part was the handful of waterfalls coming into the river in this area.  He also got a kick out of singing "let it rain, let it rain, let it rain."

I saw a picture earlier of the river in Santa Clara reaching the bottom of the bridge.  We'll all keep praying the destruction is held to a minimum and that everyone can still enjoy a safe and happy Christmas.