HikeArizona.COM

Insane river data right now, and this is only the beginning?

Verde below Tangle Creek, 29,500
Tonto Creek above Gun Creek, 32,000
Agua Fria River, 21,000
Cherry Creek, 6,000
http://waterdata.usgs.gov/az/nwis/current/?type=flow

Bartlett basically has no shore; was out there today.

@xsproutx

It looks as though they were reshared from a FB page, Arizona Through a Lens. I found within a thread on Gila River Paddlers.

@azbackpackr
Finally looks like what google maps shows it as! When I first moved here I was confused as to why they showed something that looked like a river delta but was completely dry.

Hansenaz wrote:I was wondering if Painted Rock could fill up and overflow?

Now that Captain Steve has plied the waters of the UK. It seems he wants to start a Lower Gila river boat petro cruise.

@Alston_Neal
Captain Steve Stubing has a certain ring to it, Gopher Neal.

@azbackpackr
That picture shows where?

@Hansenaz
Best I can figure out is a couple miles south of Gillespie Dam.

@Hansenaz

@Alston_Neal is always right.

The USGS stream gauge at Painted Rock dam has reached its maximum operational limit ... 6 feet deep.

Hansenaz wrote:That picture shows where?

After quick forensic analysis from the March 23 sat image (the most recent pass by the high-resolution CCP bird), I got a pretty solid angle on it. There was a spike in river flow between this photograph and now, so the flow is now less than pictured. However, the amount of water being "stored" above the dam is more than pictured.

@chumley
Thanks! So where do you get the near real-time pictures?
Looks like the "dam" is containing the in-flow. I'm planning a trip to Oatman Flats tomorrow (which is below the dam) and I saw this morning it's in a flood warning zone.

@Hansenaz
There's a 600cfs dam outflow today, so that might warrant an alert if there are any urban campers nearby, but the topography of that area doesn't seem to me to warrant a flood warning, except to alert farmers of a change from bone dry to somewhat muddy.

@Hansenaz
Were you planning on going there from Painted Rock, or from above?

@Alston_Neal
Oh we'll drive in from the south (Sentinel) per usual. I still don't know if my car (cause of sand) or any car (cause of private property) can connect from there to the north approach past Painted Rock. I'm not really worried about the chance of water/mud - can stay high - just curious at this point.

They've continued to ramp it up. 971 as of 7:30 p.m.

If I wasn't at a job training in Marble Canyon I'd be down there.

@Alston_Neal
@Hansenaz
1120 cfs.
I did a little bit of research to try to find out what their plan is. But didn't find anything. Is anyone else looking or has it been on the news? I've been watching the gage at Dome Rock also, although it will take a long time to get there.

Fun photos from the latest pass of the Chinese Spy Balloon. All three photos are at the same scale, showing the relative size of each currently. When full, San Carlos has the longest coastline of any lake in Arizona. When full, Painted Rock Reservoir holds over 3.3x as much water as Roosevelt Lake can hold.

The rafters we talked to on the Colorado said that the higher water made the rapids less exciting because more of the boulders were well submerged. I'm not sure how accurate that is, since it's a small sample of possibly not very experienced people at Granite and Hermit.

@big_load
It's only true for some of the rapids. Some are washed out at 20K, others are harder. But it's also kind of a different topic, because it's a totally different watershed from the one being discussed in this thread.

The reason for the recent high water in Grand Canyon was because the Bureau of Reclamation decided to let a lot more out of Glen Canyon Dam and be nice to Lake Mead. So that does not have anything to do with the watershed of the Gila River, which includes the Salt and Verde watersheds. The Gila River, if allowed to go all the way across, runs into the Colorado down by Yuma, hundreds of miles below Grand Canyon.

The BOR is anticipating that they can allow Lake Powell to go up and still give a little bit more to Lake Mead, which they had not planned to do before. This is because the watersheds in Wyoming, western Colorado and northern Utah are going to provide Lake Powell with a pretty good amount. The spring melt-off of the Rocky Mountains has begun.

So, there really isn't a whole lot of relation between the incredible amount of water in central Arizona, and the recent high water in Grand Canyon, other than the fact that throughout the West there was generally a better winter than usual. However, in central Arizona those percentages are multiplied. It truly was an amazing winter on the Verde watershed.

@azbackpackr
We figured the releases were bigger. Does that also explain the amount of debris? There were a lot more logs and branches then I'd seen before. I wondered if they were coming from the Little Colorado, but I suppose they could have just come from higher parts of the banks than usually get flow.