Railroaders' Nostalgia > Mad Dog Chronicle # 179: El Nino Years on the SP

Mad Dog Chronicle # 179: El Nino Winters on the SP


Looking through my calendars and notes it is apparent that both the 1979/1980 and the 1980/1981 winters were relatively mild. I do not know what the rainfall statistics for those years are. In fact one of the best clues that these were average years is that I have very few entries concerning weather for either of these winters. On the other hand, there are multiple entries concerning weather and weather related problems for both the 81/82 and the 82/83 winters. During those two winter seasons there were multiple weather related problems on the Coast Line, the Tehachapiis, the Sierras, the Western Division around The San Francisco Bay Area and the NWP. I will focus on the Western Division and the NWP since I was responsible for operations on both during this time period.

In this part of the world, an El Nino refers to a warm ocean current, which moves north opposite the Central and Northern California Coast. I do not actually understand the underlying weather dynamics, but I sure do know what the results are. The normal storm track, which brings storms to Washington and Oregon, frequently missing even Northern California moves to the south. Now the storms come ashore in Central and Northern California. Rainfall in the Humboldt Bay-Eureka area is around sixty inches in a normal season. For these two years the average rainfall in Eureka was more than double that.

Conventional wisdom among the maintenance of way officers of the NWP was that real trouble with the slides and the sinks only started after rainfall exceeded sixty inches. Just imagine what your railroad looks like when the rainfall exceeds 120 inches. Every sink and slide in the Russian River Canyon and the Eel River Canyon, as well as those on Ridge hill became exceedingly active. We had slides that hadn’t moved in years moving all over the property. Some of the more active sinks were moving out six inches and down six inches every twelve hours. The sink activity slows down as the rivers rise. However, watch out when the water flow in the rivers subside. As the water levels fall the sinks tend to speed up and the whole riverbank settles following the water down.

On the NWP we kept track tampers at strategic locations along the Eel and Russian River canyons. Only by constantly raising, tamping and lining the track could we keep the railroad passable. Each train operated carried several cars loaded with ballast on the head end, to be dumped, wherever required. At particularly chronic locations, the engines along with the ballast cars would be cut off and run across a sink and dumped. They were then recoupled to the train. Meanwhile the track tamper is raising the track sufficient for the safe passage of the remainder of that train. We had locations on the NWP where we did this with the passage of every train.

Bulldozers, backhoes and ballast regulators were used to clear away the debris from the various slides.

With winter storms come high winds, of course. Couple these winds with high runoff and high tides and what happens is tide levels which exceed the tide chart by over a foot. This is typically what happens at the interchange at Schellville. However, it also happens at Elkhorn Slough on the Coast line and all along the Petaluma River from Petaluma to Black Point. It will also occur along the Cal P through the Suisun Sinks. Tides like these can and will put the track under water. (see MDC #160: http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,1070057,1070057#msg-1070057 )

We obviously did have some weather issues on the NWP in 1980 as detailed in MDC #164:
http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,1104131,1104131#msg-1104131

The high winds can also cause serious wave action along the shores of San Francisco Bay. In 1983 we got train number 5 trapped by washouts caused by wave action between Rodeo and Pinole. The track had been inspected within half an hour of the scheduled passage of # 5 and was OK. But the train did not get through.

EL Nino induced storms can dump incredible amounts of rain in short periods of time. One such storm in January of 1982 dumped over seven inches of rain on the hills of the East Bay in less than three hours. In fact, this was a five hundred year storm event for the area. This caused two creeks to overflow their banks, Wildcat and San Pablo. An old fill across a former drainage channel failed and we derailed train number six when the fill liquefied and blew out as train number six passed over that fill.

I intend to cover many of these incidents with more detail in future MDC,s. I am just trying to give you an overview of what an El Nino weather pattern can do at this point.

12/11/06
mdo

That was one photograph memory from that 81-82 season ...the ballast cars on the headend of the RVERY/ERRVY. The crews, operating and MOW, worked well together, as all the trains I photographed that season made it to the Eureka and Willits within their 12 hours.

At Martinez around the depot would flood in heavy rain too.

The latest group to be the NWP has in their "business plan" an annual budget of $200,000 for maintenance. I'm sure that should be enough.

In case anybody is bored here is the link...

http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/transprog/ctcbooks/2006/1106/49_5.1.pdf

When is your book going to be released? I could read your material for months on end!

Waybiller Wrote:
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> The latest group to be the NWP has in their
> "business plan" an annual budget of $200,000 for
> maintenance. I'm sure that should be enough.


For the latest in NWP grenade tossing, check out the Altamont Press newsline where the wars erupt periodically among the true believers and the die-hard naysayers.
C.

Carol Voss
Bakersfield, CA

Mike,
Thanks for the update. I remember "Air Hose Slough" (Elkhorn) with the water right up to the ties. Went right on through at 50 MPH.

Below SLO, I remember when the Coast went out to sea. The bridge at Surf and the main line at Sacate. They took out the main and the siding was then the main at reduced speed. Then there were the slides east of Sea Cliff which are still going on today

Of course, Tunnel 10 on Cuesta. They couldn't keep that in place to save their butts. Also the slip east of Serrano, West of where the switch USED to be in the steam days.

I will never forget being the hoghead on the Medfly and being stopped at Santa Barbara. We had to put the train on No. 1, tie it down and deadhead with the passengers to LA. It seems there was a large bolder (14 feet high) sitting on the main at Santa Clause Lane.

I would rather deal with this than the STUFF at Norden. Something about the cold, steam generators to keep the rotary hinges from freezing, etc just doesn't do it.


Nudge

mdo wrote:

>EL Nino induced storms can dump incredible amounts
of rain in short periods of time. One such storm in January of 1982 dumped over seven inches of rain on the hills of the East Bay in less than three hours.


According to several websites I checked, there was no El Nino during the winter of 1981-1982

Maybe not, but was a big rain and snow season. Perhaps that one just got by the "experts".

In the winter of 81-82, here in Texas we had a first. The lakes actually froze to nearly covering the entire lake. Trees split due to cold and snow conditions. It was a terrible winter and has never been duplicated.

EL Winter 77-78 took out the ATSF Elsinore branch in So Kal

KevO

Perhaps the worst combination of circumstances, that is, several artic storms that dump lots of snow, sometimes at very low altitudes, followed by a warm tropical storm. This is known around here as a "pineapple express" These can occur in any year, frequently in the early part of the season. Although it seems to happen more frequently with El Nino conditions.

This is what took out more than 90 miles of the UP in the Feather River drainage in December of 1996. I believe that this is also what happened in both 1955 and 1964 along the NWP. (if JLY is still reading these Chronicles, he would certainly know.)

What you get is a warm tropical rain with lots of percipitation which falls on and melts the snow deposited by the previous cold storm or storms. This will quickly turn into a major flood event.

mdo

the Dec 30th '05 storm yielded some of the highest 24hr precip levels ever recorded in CA.

http://www.cnrfc.noaa.gov/dec2005storms.php

Lots of stats in here as well as references to several other years MDO mentions.

sphogger

The winter of 1981-82 is well known for the heavy snowfall in the Sierra's, especially Feb. through late April. It was primarily caused by a persistent and unusually deep/strong low pressure system in the lower Gulf of Alaska, so it was not an El Nino (but maybe a precursor event).

The drought of late 1976 through December 1977 was the result of an unusually strong La Nina, the opposite of El Nino. The El Nino event for the winter of 1977-78 broke the drought (anybody remember the 70-80 mph winds in Bakersfield around then?). In fact I never saw it rain so hard, while living in SLO, than the day in Feb. 1978 when it rained 3.40 inches in less than 3 hours (and the area south of town got flooded out). That rain alone caused SP major headaches; the major slipout at Serrano and the washouts south of Santa Barbara.


Allen

Allen, believe it or not, that 81-82 winter only ranked third (680 inches) on the heaviest snowfall at Norden and if it not not snowed 193 inches that last week in March and early April, it would have ranked as a slightly above normal season. 82-83, the next year ( 796 inches), came in second, pushing 81-82 to third. Two extremely heavy years of snow, most unusual. BTW, 1936-37 was the heaviest at 819 inches. I have the actual daily measurement inches at Norden for 81-82 and 82-83, thanks to the OP&C situation report tapes. I'm sure JLY has them too (on his wall). Lots of hard work on his part and his MOW forces.

From 1960 to 2000 here are the El Nino years:


1965-66

1972-73 (strong)

1977-78

1982-83 (strong)

1987-88

1991-92 (strong)

1992-93

1994-95

1997-98 (strong)


AM

I remember '82-'83 as the year all of California "melted", hills were sliding down if there was even the slightest slope, one can see those scars all around the state. But, in The Eel River region, 1964 was the grandaddy of them all, it is the '64 floods that you still see signs, way up the hill, where the high water mark was, it's hard to comprehend what a raging mess that was. And yes, it was/is the "pinapple express" factor which made these storms so severe. Our normal winter storms form in the Gulf of Alaska and swing down the coast, whereas the pinapple has it's origins much farther south, and comes across the Pcific almost as a tropical storm, hence much higher snow level, with lots of melt and unseasonal runoff, just adding to the already heavy rainfall amounts...my guess is that it was "one of those" in that great storm of '64. AA

Stanford White
Carmel Valley, CA

Anyone remember San Luis Obispo flooding around 1970? I remember serious high water marks in the drug store on Higuera that is now Walgreens I think it is. Never did hear why that happened, whether it was a heavy winter overall in the west or if it was local issues around SLO. I wonder if anything was done with the drainage systems to prevent it from happening again....

I also wonder how the engineers determined elevation of the roadbed when the line around Sacramento and Marysville were first laid out long before dikes and causeways. For instance the railroad is basically at grade level in Davis and it very gradually rises above the surrounding land as it approaches the causeway. I wonder if its always been that way and if that is an indication of what the railroad thought of as the potential for high water. Don't even want to think about Yuba City/Marysville, the roadbed is far higher than the surrounding new home tracts on the Valley and Sac Subs....

sphogger

The National Weather Service office in Portland Oregon has rated their top ten storms http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/pqr/paststorms/index.php with the 1964 storms rated as #5, the NWS sites also have links to various El Nino definitions and lists. I have a copy of the SP Publication describing the efforts to rebuild the Cascade Summit Line, very interesting. Joel Ashcroft's SP in the Cascades includes an interesting collection of 1964 photos and info: http://spcascades.railfan.net/1964flood.html

The NWP rebuild from 1964 was apparently documented on film by Morrison-Knudsen of Boise, Pentrex offered a VHS version of the footage for a short time. It's all of 13 minutes titled '177 Days' the amount of time required to open the line to traffic. It includes footage of the bridge destruction and rebuild, the high water mark at Island Mountain, washed-out track, etc.

sphogger Wrote:
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> Anyone remember San Luis Obispo flooding around
> 1970? I remember serious high water marks in the
> drug store on Higuera that is now Walgreens I
> think it is. Never did hear why that happened,
> whether it was a heavy winter overall in the west
> or if it was local issues around SLO. I wonder if
> anything was done with the drainage systems to
> prevent it from happening again....

Downtown SLO had serious flooding in both 1969 and 1973 (both prolonged rain events compared to the flash flooding south of town in Feb. 1978 when the downpour nearly washed the Hwy 101 bridge away).

AM

I will add that the 1978 "drought breaker" El Nino hit the south central California coast the hardest. There was lots of rain around Christmas 1977 and most of Jan. 1978. There was about a two week lull with no rain, then that cloudburst day in Feb. followed by plenty of rain from late Feb. through late March.

Santa Barbara had a near record amount of rainfall in January, Feb. and March 1978, more than the first three months of 1983 (the strong El Nino year).


AM