Friday, September 17, 2004

Ivan's Runoff

(No, not an election post.)

We got around 5" of rain here, and now it's all in the rivers headed back to the sea. At lunch, we drove over the Cahaba River, and it was positively white-water! Just below US-280, there's a little wall or mini-dam that had turned into a massive standing wave. Made me really wish I had had my camera with me.

We (3 co-workers and I) stopped on both sides and walked down to the bank to get a better look. Massive flow of water. The USGS site showed that average flow is somewhere between 10 and 50 cuft/sec, while today's was 15,700 cuft/sec. Again, massive.

But get this. Going back, we stopped on the bridge (not blocking traffic, like folks going the other way), and watched the flow from above for a few secs, then saw (I still can't believe it) people out on the river! One inflatable kayak and two people in brightly colored inner-tubes. I half-expect to hear either fatality or missing-person reports on them later today or tomorrow. Insane. Darwin nominees in action.

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