Friday January 22, 2016 Guerneville CA.
Russian river’s mouth moves north
It was raining as I got it going this morning, so I checked in with the weather guys. They said it was going to rain some more, with some letting up in the afternoon, so I donned my rain gear and headed down to Jenner to have a look.
It rained all the way down there and was still raining lightly when I pulled into Jenner. I continued on down to the overlook that overlooks the river’s mouth.
Jenner overlook
This was my view as I pulled into the overlook. It was raining lightly.
It was raining too much to take photos, but I took a few quick ones anyway trying to keep the camera dry.
River’s mouth is moving north
This is looking out the river’s open mouth, looking into the rough ocean. Note the river’s mouth opening is starting to move more north which it does in the winter when the river flows fast enough to cause this to happen. You can see the mouth is open from the end of the jetty on the left all the way over to the big rock there on the right which is called Haystack rock.
The main reason the river’s mouth goes out to the north in the winter is when the river gets more water coming down it from the rains, the current is greater.
It’s Penny Island that does it
As more water flows, more water goes down Penny Island’s back channel. When this more water comes out on the bottom end of the island, it slams hard into the main river channel causing it to make a right turn throwing all that water further north, which picks up the sands in the river and carries them north.
I took a look up the river which looked like this. You can just see the bottom end of Penny Island on the far left, so maybe you can imagine how the water coming down the back channel can slam into the main river channel, which is more on the left side.
Not kayaking here today, Maybe Monte Rio
Too much rain and wind, so I decided not to kayak here today and headed back to Monte Rio to check things out there. I stopped by my friend Charlie’s house to pay him a visit, but he wasn’t home, so I drove on down to the Monte Rio boat ramp to check it out and maybe I might put my boat in the water.
The boat ramp was fairly muddy, and it was still raining. I was thinking of doing some mud shoveling, but only thinking of it as it was still raining and I’d get wet. While I was sitting there thinking about it a car pulled in behind me and beeped.
Muddy Monte Rio boat ramp. The river water level is up about ten feet over summer levels.
It turned out to be Charlie, so I followed him back up to this house and we shot the bull for a couple hours.
Eventually, I left and went on home for the day where it was still raining, so I spent the rest of the day in the house doing not much of anything. :O)