Rains brought rising waters to Sisters

Looking out over the Metolius River from the Wizard Falls Fish Hatchery bridge on Thursday morning, a local resident said, "I've never seen the Metolius look like this."

The river was a little higher than usual - and the turbid waters had lost their usual deep turquoise color.

The river, fed by runoff from melting snow and the waters of Lake Creek, had just peaked on Wednesday in the wake of a warm weather system that dumped rain across the Sisters Country in what Sisters Ranger District fish biologist Mike Riehle described as "a little less than a 10-year flood on the Metolius and Whychus Creek."

The Metolius peaked several days after the storm, Riehle explained, because "it takes a while for the runoff and snowmelt to get through the system."

Riehle said that habitat logs that were placed in the river by helicopter last summer were still in place.

"Things look pretty good," he said. "All the habitat is in place and functioning."

Whychus Creek peaked Sunday at about 10 p.m. at 1,100 cubic feet per second of flow.

"We should be in the 100 cfs area," said Deschutes County Water Master Jeremy Giffin. "This was a very healthy flow for any time of year."

Fortunately for the residents along the creek, there was only minor flooding. Some parts of trees got stuck under the Timber Creek bridge and had to be removed by city public works crews and there was quite a bit of gravel shifted around in the area of the Forest Service's fish passage project on Whychus, but the area weathered the storm without significant incident.

Though local ski areas lost snow in the middle of a holiday weekend, the snowpack is in pretty good shape, Giffin reported.

He said the Three Creek Meadow gauging station measured 13.5 inches of water content in the snow (134 percent of average) and 13.1 inches afterward (122 percent of average).

"I think we lost a lot of our lower elevation snow, but I think we just added to the water content of our upper-elevation snow," Giffin said.

In any case, it's still too soon to tell what the water year will look like in the Sisters Country. One storm or a couple dry weeks could tilt the balance.

"Things could change either way very quickly," Giffin said.