Poking the Brazos with a Rainstick
(Nature • )
When we get the more usual two inches of hard rain blowing in from the Gulf to the south, we get wet, some of it soaks into the ground and the rest runs into the Brazos out back but doesn’t noticeably raise the river level at all here – they just have to deal with the runoff downriver at Rosharon and, a lot later, Freeport.
But the gullywhomper that crept through here in slow motion all yesterday afternoon came out of the west-northwest, and dumped tons of water over the Brazos River basin upstream before dumping another 4-plus inches on us here.
The river took immediate notice and rose five feet by a quarter after 6 yesterday evening. I was down on the banks with the kids, watching dirty-looking foam start to build up and drift by. Fifteen minutes later, the foam was beginning to concentrate itself two thirds of the way across the river, in an arc mimicing the strongest currents running below, in the channel close to the outside curve. Our side slowly builds up more land over time; the other side – where the county has just built three office buildings and plans to place a giant courts complex – keeps losing land over time, as the river carves chunks from the cliffs over there.
An orange highway barrel floated past, low in the water, and you could tell the river still had more rising to do.
It’s still too dark to go out and look, but the weather dudes show it had risen 13.5 feet from yesterday afternoon until 5:15 this morning.
Which isn’t really any big deal considering the Brazos was just meandering along at a brackish 9 feet deep before this all hit. So the river would have to rise another 25 feet before it came anywhere close to the 48-foot flood stage. I’ll be very surprised if it gets to 28 feet.
We’d had a golden algae-inspired fish kill a couple of months ago, and not much flowing into the river since except for the dead water coming out of nearby city treatment plants. So this rainstorm runoff is just what the doctor ordered, as far as the Brazos is concerned.
Unfortunately, Rosenberg and Richmond and a lot of other cities are very soon going to be getting their drinking water from the river, as regulators force them to close down water wells to avoid subsidence. I’m not sure how that’s going to work, though, because my understanding is that the rice farmers can just keep their wells pumping.
I say “unfortuntely” because No. 1, I’m drinking pretty good well water right now and I see what floats by in the Brazos and, treated or not, I would prefer a little subsidence here and there to drinking that nasty stuff. And, No. 2, the result of at least a couple hundred thousand people taking their water from the river probably will be that the “normal” river level will be even lower than the 9 feet we’ve been seeing as a result of near-drought conditions.
If we don’t watch out, we’re going to turn the Brazos into a putrid ditch full of “treated” sewer water and cotton and rice-farm chemical runoff. Probably gonna have to put a lot of extra sugar in the iced tea to kill the taste.
I’ll post a photo of the Brazos later this morning when the sun comes up. Then I’ll post another one below, so you can see what the river looks like when it really rises.
Update: OK, the photos are posted. Just for perspective, note that the treetop appearing just above the skier’s head in the bottom photo is the same willow shown on the left side of the top photo.
→ B.Dunn, Apr 19, 2009, 06 02 am
