It may not look like much, but before all the rain started, the San Lorenzo river was shallow enough here to walk across. The water was clear and barely flowing. It is impossible to guess how deep it is now. It looks like cafe au lait, and is certainly flowing better than it had been. The watershed is less than a hundred and fifty square miles, so all this water is not coming from very far away.
The first picture above, of the San Lorenzo River flowing south to Santa Cruz and the Monterey Bay, was taken from the western of the two windows on the south side of the Felton Covered Bridge. Experts believe this to be the best of the four windows. My Mother has an old black and white picture of my older sister, my younger brother and I looking out from this window when were just little tykes. There was a railroad bridge out there a long time ago. Only concrete foundations remain.
The second picture below, of the San Lorenzo River flowing from the Santa Cruz Mountains beyond, was taken from the western of the two windows on the north side of the Felton Covered Bridge. The San Lorenzo River flows south on this side too!
It has been raining rather well here. Boulder Creek, which is at the far north end of the San Lorenzo Valley, gets more rain than most places in California, and far more than the rain shadow region on the inland side of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Local rain does nothing for the water supply of the rest of California, but is a good indication that snow is falling in the Sierra Nevada, where most of the water for much of the rest of California is stored in the snowpack.
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I’ve never associated covered bridges with California. Interesting!
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There are very few here; but the Felton Covered Bridge happens to be the tallest in America. No one seems to know why it is covered though.
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Glad you’re getting rain. The trees are coming out!!! We’re a way from that–at least a month and a half. Now I know why you were at those roses.
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Yes, we were in a rush to get all dormant pruning done, including sycamores. By now, we can no longer prune birches and maples until the middle of spring.
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Hope you get enough rain, without its being too much rain! Like Shoreacres, I didn’t know about covered bridges, either. There are some in Oregon, though-so charming.
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Those who move to California are famous for complaining. We ‘always’ have a drought, but there is ‘always’ too much rain. We can not clear combustible brush or cut trees down, but there are too many forest fires. The exotics are destroying the ecosystems, but we can not cut down trees. Heck, they even complain because some public restrooms are labeled by gender, and that might offend someone.
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Yay — the creeks are no longer dry! We had another rainy morning in So Cal, and there are predictions for more tomorrow and mid-week. It’s all good!
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Yes, ours is supposed to be clear for tomorrow and Tuesday morning, with rain all day on Wednesday.
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Is that seasonal rain. I didn’t think you would get so much to cause flooding
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Oh, that is not flooding. That is the normal flow of the River after such storms. It floods once in a while. The last big flood was about this time in 1982. It was quite devastating.
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