Pictures of flooding in the Mineral area

The Elbe bridge over the Nisqually:

East Creek in Pleasant Valley:

Kootney Creek in Pleasant Valley:

Mineral Creek:

Morton update

I should’ve thought to check the Oregon papers for news on Morton.

Washington Flooding is a great little post (with a picture) from The Oregonian.  Evidently, there is a shelter at the Morton Elementary School for stranded travellers. And they’re really stranded. 7 is closed to the north. 12 is closed at Packwood and the Pass (and probably other places). 12 the other way out toward Mossyrock has slides across the road. 508 is closed. Those are all the options.

UPDATE: 4:50 – SR-7 is still officially closed, due to water over the road between the school bus barn and the State Patrol building. Evidently, locals who know the area have taken to driving through the Tubafor lot. There’s still a manned roadblock at the Elbe bridge, with guys in uniforms who are not letting anyone go south unless they have Mineral-address ID.

More on the shelter

Woman rescued from landslide north of Morton

Full photostream

Viewer photos from KOMO

I’ve never seen Glenoma flooded like this.

In other news, last night, the Coast Guard twittered:

USCG_PACAREAPAE: Coast Guard Air Station Astoria helicopter rescue crew hoisted two people in Morton, Wash. #waflood

Quick road update

SR 161 northbound is closed at 317th Street E and SR 161 southbound at 304th Street E due to water over the roadway. No detour available.

SR 7 southbound is closed at Elbe. This is a manned closure, local traffic only south of Elbe on SR 7. This is because of flooding at Morton, but if you’re only heading to Mineral, they should let you through.

I-5 is closed at Chehalis, as are the rail lines, and down to two lanes each direction in Fife, but people are still getting through.

So it sounds like from Mineral, you can get north on 7 to Spanaway, where there may be detours. From Morton, depending on how exactly they have closed 5 at 12, you might be able to get south to Portland. No one gets to go to Spokane, though.

Good news! The park seems to be ok, according to the News Tribune:

Mount Rainier officials have reopened the Nisqually entrance into the park.

The entrance was closed Wednesday evening as a precautionary measure.

Officials were concerned about flooding, which didn’t develop overnight.

The road between Longmire and Paradise is closed for snow removal.

The National Park Inn at Longmire is open.

Road closures, river predictions

That last post was just too messy after all my updates.

Rivers

Nisqually at National from HAMweather — To sum up, it’s going to be about as high as it is now for the next 24 hours, according to forecasts. This one is a little tricky to read, as the data that has already occurred is at the bottom of the screen, and the forecasts are at the top, but it comes with a nice map.

Cowlitz at Randle from HAMweather — They’re calling it a moderate flood right this second at 20.84 feet, but by 4 PM tomorrow, the forecast is for 27.69 feet. That’s two feet HIGHER than 2006.  The NWS calls for 28 feet.

Roads (from WSDOT)

All the passes are closed for tonight, at least. WSDOT will evaluate tomorrow.

I-5 is closed. Currently only in that Centralia-Chehalis way, but there are some worries about the Puyallup River Bridge in Tacoma.

7 is closed between Mineral and Morton. It is still showing as open from Eatonville, so it’s still possible to head north.

State Route 161 is closed from mile marker 13 to 18.  That’s between Eatonville and Graham, probably down by Ohop Lake. (Your humble reporter needs an atlas with MILE MARKERS) Currently, you can get from Mineral to Eatonville, however, there is flooding all the way down the Puyallup.

Lewis County road closures for Morton:

1/7/2009	09:00:AM	Davidson Rd	Morton	At river	3 feet of water over road. Residents being evacuated
1/7/2009	11:15:AM	Davis Lake Rd	Morton	800 Block	Closed due to water and debris
1/7/2009	11:45:AM	Highland Valley Rd	Morton	in the middle	is closed
1/7/2009	10:30:AM	Meinars Rd	Morton	at Meinars Rd W intersection	Closed due to slide
1/7/2009	12:00:PM	SR 508	Morton	MP 2-32, Closed in low spots from MP2 to Morton	Closed due to flooding

1/7/2009	12:00:PM	SR 508	Morton	MP 2-32, Closed in low spots from MP2 to Morton	Closed due to flooding
1/7/2009	12:00:PM	SR 7	Morton	MP 1 -16, between Morton and the Lewis County line	Closed for flooding
1/7/2009	08:30:PM	State Route 508	Morton	Closed in Both Directions between Morton and Bear Canyon MP 22 to MP 32. Severe Flooding.	Closed
1/7/2009	08:30:PM	State Route 7	Morton	Water over entire roadway	Closed
1/7/2009	08:15:AM	Temple Rd	Morton	Low spot	Water over road, closed
1/7/2009	08:38:AM	US Highway 12	Morton	Slide on Road at Peterman Hill.	Slide over roadway.

In Mineral, they are listing Pleasant Valley as “reopened” or maybe “restricted”.

1/7/2009

02:42:AM

PLEASANT VALLEY RD

Mineral

MP 2.5

WATER ACROSS BOTH LANES

I also have to report that I was wrong that the schoolkids from Mineral were stuck on the wrong side of the closure — there was no school today due to snow and flood damage.

Please, if you have any pictures from Mineral/Morton/Ashford/Packwood/Randle, drop me a line.

Baby, it’s cold outside

It’s been a cold winter for Mineral. The lake is even starting to freeze over, and Alder Lake is looking pretty solid, too.

On Wednesday, we got a substantial snowfall.

Oh, and for the kids sledding down the road at the cemetery? Not a good plan. That’s a blind hill, and if it’s slick enough for sledding, it’s too slick to stop well.

More pictures below.

Power’s out, again

Those of you in Mineral proper probably can’t read this right now (noon-thirty on Tuesday), because the power is out, and has been most of the morning. That’s why the weather reporting is out.

Speculation is that the PUD is repairing what they can of previous damages before the next big storm rolls in tonight.

I will tell you that outages in Mineral that aren’t caused by weather are usually very local. Next time it happens, instead of eating cold pb&j, wander across the Nisqually and get some nice hot food. For the outage on Saturday, we tried to go to Copper Creek, but they are closed for January, so we ended up at the  Mt. Rainier Overlander, and it was quite tasty. The bourbon burger is well worth the drive.

Weather

If you look over to the left of this page, you will see a teeny little banner with a temperature listed for Mineral. This is a weather station about two blocks from the post office, so it should be pretty accurate for “downtown” Mineral. It is updated every 10 minutes, so if you don’t see it change, refresh this page.

While it’s nice to have current weather, you probably already know more-or-less what it’s like outside. If you click on the banner, you get Mineral’s own Weather Underground page . This has forecasts, warnings, watches, and even seismic data. For people living further up the valley, there is also a Skate Creek weather station. If that still doesn’t cover you, there is a Google Maps application that has locations of personal weather stations, and you can look at it to find the weather station closest to you.

From what we can tell, the forecast is based on the forecast for the west slopes of the Cascades, and the passes, so it may sound a little more dire than it actually is. Still, it’s a lot closer to our actual weather than what’s happening in Seattle at the tv stations.

And just for the record, for the month of January, we have gotten 2.8 inches of rain, although some of that was snow this morning.

Pictures of windstorm damage

I have taken some pictures of the windstorm damage to Mineral. If you have others, please send them to mineralledger@gmail.com and I’ll upload them.

As bflynn said, Mineral was remarkably lucky to get power back so quickly, and that no one was injured. Hey, at least most people around here know how to use a chainsaw safely!

As of Sunday morning, it sounds like some Mineral residents were still without power, those in the  easternmost part of town. Eatonville got power back on Sunday, and by Monday, South Hill was no longer a nightmare of uncontrolled intersections. We’re recovering really well, but I think we are all ready for our usual winter.

I am putting the pictures below a links so dial-up users can take this on their own time.

Next comes the plague of locusts

It’s been a tough fall for Mineral. I’m writing this post from Boston because Mineral currently does not have power, never mind internet access. They only got phone access sometime this afternoon. The reason Mineral is currently incommunicado is because of a major winter storm, with incredibly high winds, that knocked out power to over a million in Washington state, mostly in King and Pierce counties but obviously with significant impact in Eastern Lewis County.

 Here’s the information as I currently understand it:

• This morning both Mineral Road North and Mineral Hill Road were impassible and had numerous power line breakages. Mineral Road South was the only road out of town. Sources report that as of about 9 this morning, power was out all the way from Mineral to Puyallup proper, including Elbe, Eatonville, Graham and South Hill.
• Phone lines serving Mineral were out and no calls were being connected. (Now repaired)
• We conjecture that at least one cell phone tower was damaged, as locations near town that usually have coverage did not.
• One family on Mineral Hill Road had an unexpected visitor in the form a tree branch in the kitchen. No one was hurt, but there is structural damage to the house.
• I have an unconfirmed report that a house towards the edge of town to the south (near the trailer park) was also damaged by a falling tree.
• There are numerous trees down across roads, and one more house damaged.
• One Eatonville resident, Harold Fox, was killed on Highway 7 near Roy by a falling tree (http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/northwest/story/6283571p-5481115c.html).
• Morton has power. The road to Morton is passible. Crews were seen working lines on the divide.

UPDATE: Mineral just got power back. The power was out for approximately 23 hours.

Rainfall totals for November

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15

0.000 1.654 0.126 1.732 1.142 4.567 1.732 0.157 0.118 1.693 0.512 1.457 0.787 0.039 2.165

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

0.51 0.00 0.039 0.00 1.14 0.52 1.41 0.59 1.38 0.47 0.00 0.99 0.00 0.19 0.15

(Total to date 19.94″)