News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Workers pumped out the Three Wind Shopping Center parking lot, which became a small lake.
Days of soaking rains left the Sisters country water-logged but mostly undamaged.
The exception was a major mudslide that buried a maintenance shop at Camp Davidson near Suttle Lake (see story, page 1).
The City of Sisters and the immediate area seemed to weather the unusually soggy weather pretty well. Parts of some parking lots turned into miniature lakes, requiring business owners to break out the pumps, but there were no reports of damaging flooding.
Squaw Creek rushed through town in a hurry, but it was well-behaved — a condition that did not surprise Public Works Director Gary Frazee. He said that the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office contacted him about the flood status of the creek and he was able to allay concerns.
The warm temperatures over the past two weeks had eliminated any major ice dams and even with early snowfall there isn’t enough low-level snow pack to cause serious run-off problems.
“It takes snow or ice to get (the creek) out of its banks,” Frazee said. “If it’s just water, I don’t think we’re going to have a problem.”
And it was “just water” for most of the week. Temperatures remained above average, in the high 30s to mid 40s and the heavy precipitation seldom had a chance to turn to snow.
The rain sometimes fell in torrents and several city streets in Bend were closed due to flooding on Friday, December 30.
That didn’t happen in Sisters, even on some streets that traditionally turn into ponds.
“Last summer we went out and sucked out all our dry wells and got all the sediment and debris out of them, Frazee said. “They seem to be working pretty well.”
While the weather forecast called for more rain this week, it was expected to come in showers instead of the buckets that fell to mark the end of 2005.
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
Reader Comments(0)