Sacramento may be 100 miles from the ocean, but it's still a community defined by water.
The past two weeks offered a powerful reminder, as both the Sacramento and American rivers have swelled substantially in response to a stormy December. Such high flows haven't been seen since the winter of 2005-06.
For some, it's an inconvenience. Parts of the American River Parkway bike path went underwater two weeks ago when releases from Folsom Dam were doubled – to 30,000 cubic feet per second – to make way for upstream runoff. This forced some bicycle commuters to find a detour.
For others, the high flows are a thrilling reminder that a little weather can give our normally glassy-smooth rivers a whole different character.
Dams may control the flow on most Central Valley rivers, but they can't suppress everything Mother Nature dishes out.
"It seems like it's unusual because we've had a fairly long dry spell," said Rob Hartman, hydrologist in charge of the California-Nevada River Forecast Center, a branch of the National Weather Service in Sacramento.
"In reality," he said, "you would expect this to happen several times each winter, and it's not a problem. We're just trending back toward normalcy."
December has been very wet in California. So wet that, as of Wednesday, the statewide snowpack stood at 215 percent of average for the date. But it has not been wet enough yet to approach flooding conditions on any of the state's major rivers.
Those big releases from Folsom Dam two weeks ago? That was nothing compared to a true flood-control scenario.
The American River channel has a current flood-flow capacity nearly four times greater, or about 115,000 cfs. That volume hasn't been approached since 1997, the last year of serious flood risk.
But even 30,000 cfs gets attention. And it's still a lot of water: enough to fill an Olympic-size swimming pool every three seconds.
At those flows, the river is transformed. Shorelines where we normally walk, fish or picnic are gone, replaced by fast, cold water. Trees go under water. Wading beaches become distant and dangerous rapids.
For some, this makes the river more fun, not less.
Kayakers have been flocking to newly emerged standing waves in some areas on the American River below Folsom Dam. These "play waves" offer a chance to practice surfing and agility techniques on what is normally Class I water, the easiest of the whitewater classifications.
"There are definitely high flow hazards that only someone experienced and capable at Class 2 should do now," said Bryant Burkhardt, a Folsom resident who works and teaches kayaking at California Canoe & Kayak in Rancho Cordova.
One of these is a wave near the El Manto Drive river access in Rancho Cordova that seems to appear when flows exceed 15,000 cfs.
Burkhardt maintains the Paddle California blog. Three days before Christmas, he and some friends enjoyed the newly turbulent lower river, and he posted a YouTube video of their wave-surfing fun.
"People are excited to be able to get out and do a lot of paddling right now in what normally is a slow time," he said.
Extra water had to be released from Folsom Dam this month because, during winter, federal rules require a certain capacity to be maintained in reservoirs to capture potential floods. The numbers vary, but Folsom Dam's current storage target is 397,500 acre-feet, or just 40 percent of its total capacity. The current actual storage is 431,171 acre-feet.
Folsom is managed more actively for flood protection than most other major reservoirs in California for several reasons.
One is that it is relatively small compared to the size of the upstream watershed. This means a storm making a direct hit on the watershed could quickly overwhelm the reservoir.
More at The Sacramento Bee.
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Jellyfish numbers are on the rise worldwide according to a global study conducted by scientists from the University of British Columbia. The research team examined data for several species of jellyfish and found that jellyfish populations were increasing in 62 percent of the locations they analyzed. Areas with booming jellyfish populations included the coastal waters of East Asia, the Black Sea, the Northeastern United States, Hawaii and Antarctica.