River’s Mouth is Still Closed and the Water is Rising Around Jenner

Friday December 11, 2015 Jenner CA.

I was curious to see what the water level would be as I headed down to Jenner today. It was almost where I said it would be, but the big thing is the mouth did not wash out so things are still flooded.

Here’s what the parking lot looked like as I drove to the ramp this morning.jenner

 

Dan was there putting his boat in the water as I put my boat in the water. I paddled out and took this picture of the flooded visitor center.ceanter

 

I joined Dan and we headed on down towards the mouth along the river’s north shoreline, shooting the bull as we went. We made it down to here and were shooting the bull when John who lives down here joined us and we shot some more bull. :O)powwow

 

Eventually we moved over to in front of the closed river’s mouth and sat and watched the big waves come in. It appears that the big waves that were supposed to come in yesterday, arrived late and were pounding the beaches today instead. One big wave after another was coming in and pounding the beaches making a lot of noise.ocean

 

Dan and I were headed over to the end of the river to look around when I spotted this twenty inch ocean fish dead in the water. Red snapper maybe?fish

 

The surf was really pounding causing a lot of mist or haze in the air. This is looking over the seals on the beach to Goat rock which is just south of Jenner. I think the state rangers closed the access to this beach today.mist

 

Eventually we left the mouth area.  We passed by these pelicans and seagulls taking a bath and preening.birds

 

Dan went over to a quiet beach and had lunch while I went over to where I know there is a swamp that I usually can’t get into because of all the brush and with the  water high, I had a chance to paddle into it and check it out. The swamp was mostly full of reeds. I was able to paddle into a good part of it, but I didn’t find anything too interesting while I was exploring around. A couple of mud hens is all I saw.

This is looking down the swamp towards the ocean.swamp

 

I hung around there for a bit, then went back out in the river and paddled into the flooded part of Penny Island. The water is high enough now that a good portion of the island is gone.

I’ve paddled into the island a good distance here, but looking back out, I’m out in the middle of the river.island

 

I headed back down to the river’s closed mouth to have another look going by John’s house. His garage is taking water and the wind blew all this wood in and around his place. If the wind doesn’t change before the water goes down, he’s going to have a big mess to clean up. This wood was also stopping John from getting into the river with his kayak.johnshouse

 

Just about that time, the sun poked it’s face out for about ten minutes before disappearing again.sun

 

The tide was going out a little and the surf wasn’t quite as high as I approached the closed mouth again to check the height of the sand dam.waves

 

Paddling up to the sand dam, I tried to get a measurement of how high the sand was above the river water so as to know how high the water would get before it had a chance to wash the dam sand out. It was hard to judge, but as near as I could tell, it was two feet or just a little more, which could put two more feet on top of the water at the flooded visitor center. sandbar

 

And it’s also possible that the ocean could pile even more sand up and make the dam even higher as it did last night.

I headed back to the visitor center, first stopping to talk with John about the height of the mouth and then paddling into the post office parking lot. The post office lady is putting a sign on the mail box closing it.nomail

 

Add two more feet to this water level if the mouth doesn’t blow open or if they don’t breach it soon. Maybe tomorrow they will breach it, but tomorrow is Saturday and they don’t usually work on weekends and so far the word is they aren’t going to breech it.

We’ll see how thing play out. Nice day paddling around the estuary.

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3 Responses to River’s Mouth is Still Closed and the Water is Rising Around Jenner

  1. Nate says:

    Do you have an update on this matter given the flooding in Guerneville? My grandmother has a home in Jenner I frequent with maintenance and am planning on heading in within the following weeks. P.S. I enjoyed your blog. Especially the part where you guys were just “shooting the bull” lol. Thanks, Nate.

  2. furrygnome says:

    Interesting blog Bob! Does this river mouth flooding happen regularly? And how do I follow your blog? Do I need to follow through Google+?

    • Bob says:

      No, the flooding is a rarity as they usually breech the closed mouth with an excavator before things flood. As far as following my blog, use https://bobseyes.net as a favorite or put a shortcut on your desktop.

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