The Guadalupe River Bypass in downtown San Jose was built about a couple/three dozen years ago to prevent the occasional heavy rain years' swelling of the Guadalupe River and subsequent flooding of the surrounding neighborhoods. On a normal, dry, summer day the river is essentially a 6" deep, 8 foot wide trickle flowing through the channel 15 feet below and to the side of the bottom of the big concrete bypass structures, and the bottom of the Coleman Avenue Overpass that goes over the river is 30-40 feet above the level of the water. Saturday, the water line was 2 feet above the bottom of the bypass structure.
I haven't been down there to observe since, but on a similar rainy week a number of years ago, I saw the water level reach 2 feet from the top of the bypass structure and close to the bottom of the overpass… It's been raining a lot. Deepest darkest Santa Clara where I live (about four miles from that part of the Guadalupe River) is at an elevation of 90 feet so little flooding here so far, although the flood channels along the San Tomas and Cabrillo streams/river have more than double the usual depth of water in them. Larry lives in the Santa Cruz mountains about 25 miles to the south and west of me, on the western side of the slopes, which get a lot more rainfall than I do here in the south end of Santa Clara Valley. G -- %(real_name)s Pentax-Discuss Mail List To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
