Log-O-Meter

Greetings Fellow Extravaganzers from The Scene of it all—

 

Well, gang, as the attached photos indicate, in supplement to the now bi-weekly flow charts that our Extravaganza Coordinator Extraordinaire Patty “Flo” Gallia is beaming your way, the 2011 runoff is well under way and right on schedule this year!  Each year we use a set of fallen logs that span one of the side channels of our own Rock Creek as the visual indicator of just what a dramatic change the streams of Western Montana experience during the annual snow melt and resultant “runoff” of that liquefied snow as it makes its way downhill, filling thousands of rivulets that, in turn, fill hundreds of creeks which, in successive turn, then fill the major rivers.  A “good run off” bodes well for our E-11 fishing—and this year’s runoff has all of the makings of that, to wit: (a) beginning with a 100% normal upper climes snow pack, combined with (b) increasing temperatures [into the upper 70’s at Missoula’s elevations] and (c) a consistency in those higher temperatures combined with (d) a seasonally normal rainfall during May and June (the typically wettest of Montana’s months).

 

A month ago I took a photo of our Logo-O-Meter when the flowage along Rock Creek was a meager 225 cubic feet per second; that is the first of the above photos.  Compare that visage with the next two shots taken from the same vantage point, the first of which was taken earlier this week when Rock Creek was flowing at 1540 cfs (“cubic feet per second”) and the last of which taken just an hour ago with the Creek flowing at a (nicely increasing) 1840 cfs—a 20% increase in just as few of days.

 

To give you some perspective of where we are potentially headed during this year’s runoff, in 2010 the flow along Rock Creek peaked at 3,750 cfs [twice the current flow] and during 2009 peaked at 4,850 cfs [2.5 times the current flow]. 

 

As we track this year’s runoff, our E-11 goals are as follows: (i) to have a healthy, bell curve runoff, where the rivers get a good flushing; (ii) to have the runoff peak and thereafter begin to decline sometime around the first week of June; and (iii) to have the flow on Rock Creek be somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 cfs [i.e., at today’s current level] come the arrival of Group One on June 18^th, now just 40 [yikes!] days from right now!

 

May the flow be with “y’all”!!

 

RCR-----<’///><