First Flush - Red Alert, a night of waiting

First came the Red Alert, Monday Oct 12 - Just before 5 pm.
If anyone can remember that far back, it rained in the early evening.   But that wasn't the real thing.

Instead, it stopped and  I got a phone call about 8 pm or so from Nancy at Coastal Watershed who said the storm was coming from the north, and they were in Aptos.   They had no one in Santa Cruz to help them "call" the event, could I help?  "Ok, sure"


THEN, Nancy explained the real storm was expected sometime between midnight and 6 am.  "Hmmm, ok, " I said.  Could I, she asked, check for rain about once each hour.  In the mean time, she said, I could watch the storm on radar.    "Ok, I said - could be fun."


I didn't mind dedicating my night's sleep to science and the environment, but unfortunately I have no internet at home.   So I got a ride to the 24 hour dinner on Ocean and explained to the manager I was hoping to stay through the night for "First Flush."    "Yeah, sure, ok", was the reply.   "We now have wi-fi internet."


So I settled in.   Ordered something expensive on the menu and a lot of coffee.   But when came time for internet and radar, the manager said, "Oh, it's new and some people have problems."  


Well, I had problems.  So, no internet, no radar, but a good meal and I did some reading.   The hours started to tick by.  A little drizzle, but not the real thing.   Nancy was watching the radar and calling me every so often.



By 2 am, it started to rain again and a little wind, but not too serious.  I stayed in touch with Nancy.


But soon after this, the night crew at the diner reminded me that the limit was 2 hours.  I tried to explain the previous manager had ok'd this and I was doing this for science.  The night manager, a small, gentle looking woman but with a no-nosense attitude  who has heard it all before, said she didn't know anything about that.


I suppose I could have stayed, but the rain and wind were just starting to kick up and I made an executive decision:   "go home, before it really rains."  


So after 3 am, I made the slow march across the river, down a very subdued and increasingly wet Pacific Avenue toward home on Beach Hill.  It was kind of nice, actually.



By 4 am, I was home - soaked and cold. But still little wind and not a hard rain, yet. In fact, it seemed to tappering off.  Nancy said it really hadn't started much in Aptos but they could see on radar it was imminent in Aptos.    Then she disappeared.

If she "called" it too early, or worse the rain stopped, then there would a lot of volunteers handing around the watershed without enough runoff to collect meaningful samples.   Call it too late and maybe too much of the gunk has already runoff and we've missed the First Flush.



By 4:15 am or so, like a fool in the rain, which had begun again,  I sent another text message.  "You, ok?"   And got the reply, "we're calling it"


In another minute, I was nearly knocked over by a gust of wind - "Hey, this is getting serious - Mother Nature is angry"  and made haste to get inside the door, and to bed.   


Lucky me because about 50 others were being awakened with a chain of phone calls - "Get up, it's raining, go to your site! This is First Flush." 



The Red Alert follows, and then the note from Nancy after it was all over:

Hello Fabulous First Flush volunteers!

This is a Red Alert: We expect the First Flush to happen tonight – see the latest note from Jason:

Get ready for a big storm, this one may actually live up to the hype.  This morning's data indicate this storm is zeroing straight in on the central coast with very strong winds and heavy rain. 

The radar looks clear so at most a few showers may go through this afternoon but nothing much.  Extrapolating satellite motion puts it in here sometime between midnight and 6am.  I would start watching the radar after midnight though.  The rain front should be pretty obvious with this one.  Importantly, rain could be slow to develop in Monterey because this area tends to be rain shadowed in southeasterly wind regimes.  Keep an eye out the window for this.  Given the strength of the storm, rain will pick up and become moderate to heavy, even in Monterey by mid morning. 

Once again be careful, this is a potentially dangerous storm.

Here are a couple of links to help you watch the weather.

Satellite: Naval Research Lab

http://www.nrlmry.navy.mil/sat_products.html

(click on "west coast & EPAC")

Radar:  National Center for Atmospheric Research

http://www.rap.ucar.edu/weather/radar/

This site also has some satellite and weather model data

National Weather Service

http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/mtr/

Jason Nachamkin

Research Scientist

Naval Research Laboratory

And after it was all over:

To All Our Fabulous First Flush Volunteers:

Well the Central Coast was a very exciting place to be in the wee hours of October 13 and no one knows this better than the 40 “BOLD” volunteers (in the words of scientist John Ryan from MBARI) who crawled out of comfy covers at 4 AM to go out in the wild wind and rain and take those little samples of dirty water!!

We are pleased to report that all FF sites (12 storm drains and 3 stream sites) were monitored; all samples arrived in a timely fashion to the lab in Monterey and best, all volunteers stayed safe out there in spite of this being a 50 year record for an October storm.

CSD-03, the Auto Plaza and CSD-08, Monterey Ave delivered as expected with big water and a tricky approach. Thanks to the fishermen on those teams (including several from Santa Cruz Fly Fishermen) those sites were handled with care! And several sites exceeded our expectations such as LOSD-05 at 30^th Avenue which was not sampled for the 3^rd time series due to unsafe conditions (good call team!). Another surprise, ASD-02, the Seacliff Beach stormdrain (a 36” diameter monster), was gushing so hard that several team members had to go in with chest waders to get close enough to the pipe to sample and their note-taker had to be 25-30’ away to avoid being underwater! (This site had not been sampled before……so now we know!) Finally, ASD-01 at Spreckles was monitored just in time…. as Debie snapped a pic on her way home Tuesday afternoon and the spot that team members stood in the morning rain was, by then, completely underwater, a small tree had fallen across the cement weir at the sample site and later the road was closed due to a downed tree!

Our interns, Jessica, Katrina and Mallory did a great job sampling Soquel Creek with the grab pole and managed to get the lagoon sample just 4 minutes before the creek breached the sandbar and there was no longer a lagoon. Good job!

Special thanks to Rachel R. for jumping in to be team captain at SCSD-03 Bay Avenue in the City of Santa Cruz when Lisa became ill. And thanks to Jennie M. for jumping teams at the last minute to cover for missing team members in Santa Cruz.

Thanks go to Nicole S. for helping with check-in at the Hub despite lack of sleep and a touch of food poisoning.

Thanks to our weather guru, Dr. Jason Nachamkin for keeping us well informed on the approaching storm throughout the weekend.

And a special thanks to Jim R. who stayed up much of the night at the SC Diner and then walked down Pacific Ave keeping a watch on the weather and drains in Santa Cruz while Debie and Nancy cat-napped in Aptos.

Attached is a note from our technical director, Armand Ruby, which attests to the excellence of our timing in calling the flush and getting teams mobilized. All sites were monitored within the first hour of rainfall!! That was soooo excellent! Also, find attached a list of rainfall totals. (Thanks to those who have sent us pictures – we will be putting a bunch on facebook asap.)