This Year's Storm
March 6, 2010 - A lot of people have been wondering how big this year's storms have been. Rainfall has been scarce for several years, so many people think the recent storms have pulled us out of the drought. Don't get too excited yet. It now looks like this year's rainfall will make this a wet year. The recent rainfall has now put us a bit over average annual rainfall for our region.
And after three years to serious drought, it will take several good years for the groundwater basines and reservoirs of Southern California to recover.
Rainfall in central Pasadena has now reached 22 inches (50cm)), an inch above average for the season. This chart shows the timing and intensity of the storms
Of course all of this is intensified by the massive mudflows that are damaging or threatening many homes in the foothills after the Station Fire last August. That fire denuded the watershed and has filled the stormflow with sediment, mud and debris.
The streamflow in the mountain watershed of the Arroyo Seco has been ferocious at times, as illustrated by this chart of the US Geologic stream gage in the Arroyo above JPL. On February 6 the flow reached 6,000 cubic feet per second (cfs), and amazing volume. Think of a cubic foot as basketball and then imagine 6,000 basketballs racing by you every second. Enormous! Awesome! As of now, the flow has receded to about 100 cfs, a very strong current heavily laded with mud.
You can monitor the streamflow in the Arroyo Seco in real-time here on the Arroyo Seco website: Arroyo Streamflow
Click Here for Some Spectacular Scenes of the 2010 Storms in the Arroyo Seco
Storm Scenes
You can monitor the streamflow in the Arroyo Seco in real-time here on the Arroyo Seco website:
Arroyo Streamflow
