Tuesday 26 June 2012

River levels are high here in Calgary and once again as well as in communities south of the city.Everyone is watching the skies with nervous anticipation as more rain is being forecast for today.Not what would really qualify as torrential amounts,but more than we need at the moment.

To the eye,the Bow River seems to have at least twice it's normal amount of water flow,all of it muddy and filled with debris.Some of the lower islands are nearly submerged upstream of downtown.But the Bow is not really the problem child of rivers as Calgary and southern Alberta go.It has fairly larger banks to contain it,and though there are some low lying areas around,most of the buildings are a fair distance back from the rivers edge.

Not so with the Elbow however which snakes its way in from the southwest,forms a huge reservoir behind the Glenmore Dam then cuts through a number of very high end residential areas,past Stampede Park and into the Bow east of downtown.On the Elbow,dwellings are often built right up to it's banks,as is the case on 24th Ave,S.W. where I lived during the June floods of 2005.Usually the Elbow is a pastoral little stream winding through the heart of a large city,and is lovely to have literally in your backyard.But it does not have high banks at all and can flood easily even with moderate rainfall and snow melt.The Glenmore Dam holds back a lot of water,but it's old and in 2005 there was a need to release some of the water behind it.Water over ran the banks and we were forced to evacuate for nearly a week.The stock footage of that event  that was played over and over by The Weather Channel was filmed at the very bottom of my street.Local news today is showing very similar scenes,though I no longer live in an area that causes me as much of flooding.Still,people seem to be gearing up for a flood,much the same as they were then.The situation doesn't seem nearly as dire as in 2005,but that could change very quickly if we get the rain that's anticipated.Watching the radar is rather spooky this morning as there seems to be storms all across the west,including a rather big, nasty looking one in Montana,about 200 miles away as bad weather flies.There is a concern of tornadoes east of here as well and there are watches and warnings out all over the place.It's calm right now,but the sky is smudged with gray all about and it's cool and damp with a slight wind.Kind of like what might be called a pregnant pause in the weather for now.


                                                                              

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