New Year's Eve Flood

This has been a memorable Saturday in Northern Nevada, to say the least. We're hoping that the worst is over. The River seems to have crested at 14 feet but never rose much past First Street. I moved a lot of sandbags this morning but at a certain point there wasn't much more that anyone could do, so I took the opportunity to take a few pictures. These are all taken within a block of where I live.

The above picture was taken just outside my front door on Arlington Avenue looking at the intersection of Arlington and First at about 11 a.m., just as we'd finished sandbagging the building.

This is Roff Avenue just behind the building. On the left you can see the lamppost I wrote about a couple of posts back, the desk chair still sitting vigil about two-thirds of the way up.

I went up to the large patio on the fourth floor of my building this morning and got the above picture of sandbags being delivered to Java Jungle and my favorite wine bar, Jungle Vino. As I look out the observation deck of the Fortress of Solitude right now, the water has receded quite a bit since the time this picture was taken.

This is another view of the intersection outside my building with the swollen Truckee River in the background.

This picture was taken just a few minutes ago on First Street just outside Java Jungle. You can see how much the water has receded already.

Despite the fact that some damage was probably done, it was really great to see the neighborhood pull together this morning. The bright side of situations like this is that complete strangers will reach out to help people they might otherwise never even talk to. It's a cliche, I know, but now I've seen it firsthand. In the end the river gave us a scare and some good photos, but didn't come near as high as the big floods in 1997. It isn't really time to breathe a sigh of relief yet because more rain is forecast for tomorrow night, but the water is going down and at this point there's a cautious optimism out on the street.

Word has come down from high command that the New Year's Eve fireworks display is being postponed until tomorrow, but all other New Year's Eve festivities are apparently still on for tonight. I'm not a bit surprised. This ain't Vegas; we're a hardy mountain people up here in Northern Nevada, and a little Wrath of God isn't going to slow us down that much. Anyway, just this minute I can see the sun breaking through the clouds from the window of the Fortress. The temperature is also dropping, so perhaps any further precipitation will fall as snow and won't contribute to the flooding. Actually, in the afternoon light, the Virginia Range to the east looks quite pretty. Weird as it sounds for me to say this, it might actually end up being a pleasant evening.