I have noticed over the years that some of our dams follow(as close as they can), the natural river flows. The rise and fall due to rain.

The upper nasty is flowing good and down below it is still at summer low.

It is not snowing in the hills.

Let some water go(following the natural river flows), before the wind sends a bunch of old cottens into the dams.
It is the last true river delta in WA. It needs to be a river not a lake.
Just my two cents....
NUT

Nut,
I was thinking the same thing today while looking at the flows due to the rain. The nasty at McKenna is actually lower than average this time of year, while virtually every other river in the state is pukin and floodin. Cant be good for the natural flow (pun intended) of things.
Good observation.


RL

Actually, most of the rivers below dams in the northwest that have storage available do not follow the normal river flow. The high flows of spring runoff are stored - making for lower river flows during that time - for release to generate energy during the following winter. Some dams, or projects, have little or no storage, like Snoqualmie Falls, White River, Electron, and Nisqually is sort of in the middle with some, but not a lot of, storage.

All the dams that have storage capacity are storing floodwaters to release after the rivers begin to fall. The Army Corps of Engineers takes control of all storage dam operations in the region when flooding threatens.

I received an email from Tacoma Power's operations manager saying that the heavy rains fell mostly to the north of Mt. Rainier, and although the upper Nisqually was rising, it wasn't nearly as much as the northern rivers. Same with the White and Puyallup Rivers when I last checked those stream gage readings. Tacoma was storing much of the Nisqually runoff because Alder Reservoir was significantly lower than normal for this time of year as of last week. (Of course, that may have changed by today.)

Tacoma was releasing lower than average flows into the Nisqually at the Tribe's, WDFW's, and NMFS' request, rationing the water supply - remember, two weeks ago we were in a drought situation - to protect chinook spawning redds in the river. Although the water supply situation has improved, this was the wisest move, based on available information.

At this point, it looks like chinook and pink salmon survival will be about normal in the Nisqually, Puyallup, and White Rivers. But Nooksack, Skagit, Stillaguamish, and Snohomish basin pinks and chinook will be devastated. A wild guess it that Skagit egg to fry survival for chinook will be less than 2% and pinks will be less than 1%. I guess it's a good thing that marine survival rates are higher now, so that the few smolts that make it out next spring will find good ocean conditions.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.

After reading this post last night, I went an looked at the Green's flows. Yep, flood controlled, still at 1000 CFS. Let's go fishing!

Well, this morning its at 2000, up 2.5 feet. Dam! That rivers blown, fer sure.

But yeah, the COE and BOR need to allow more natural flows to occur. I know that King County is negotiating better flow control with the City of Seattle on the Cedar River, but I don't know where they are on the Green.

Lets hope they get it right on the Nisqualy, the old girl needs a lot of help (fish wise).

The people in McKenna and on the delta have legitimate concern about the corps. practices.

Seems like they fill the res. and then when there is a high tide with a strong westerly and a heavy warm system upstream they blow it out and those people are floating.



herm

Herm,

The Nisqually has only a small amount of storage at Alder reservoir, so if got the kind of precip that the northern rivers just did, Alder and LaGrande Dams would be spilling out of control also. There is nothing Tacoma or the Corps could do about that.

The Skagit crested at about 165,000 cfs and 42 on the gage at Concrete today. If it hits that height at Mt. Vernon (it probably won't) that would be higher than a 100 year flood. It's been a bad week to be a salmon up there.

Wooley Worm,

The Corps is required by Congress to keep flows to no more than 12,000 cfs on the Green River at Auburn if possible. They pass natural flows through Howard Hanson Dam most of the winter, except when higher floods threaten. Then in late winter and early spring, they begin storing some of the spring runoff to augment summer flows for fish and M&I water to Tacoma.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.