Rien's Beach Flood

Beginning with rains on about January 6, the river began to rise. It reached a crest of approximately 35 feet on Monday, Jan. 9, then receded a tiny bit. As more rain fell over the next 36 hours, a local high tide helped to force the swollen river up a few more feet to a recorded peak of 37.82 feet on Wednesday, Jan 11.   Note that heights are based on the nearest recording station listed as Johnson's Beach, CA. These photos are from further down river at Riens Beach, and as such act as a reference point for locals to translate the Johnsons' Beach figures into something visually relative to the Riens Beach area; being further down river the geography (wider area for river to spread) as well as runoff from other sources into the Russian River means that what ever height is recorded at Johnsons' Beach will probably be a different height than a reading recorded directly at Riens Beach (If they did do measurements at Riens). Although the National Weather Service had a nice graph showing the projected flooding, in reality it was off by about 24 hours, causing several to have to evacuate much sooner than they had anticipated. A few pics from the Jan 10- 11 flood......