Mudslides

silversand wrote:
I often have these premonitions, like camping out on a slight terrain rise of 30 feet I found using flood simulation software, on the bucholic desert flats tens of miles wide in the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge, the Quartzsite BLM, or at the base of Santa Catalina Mountains; and overnight, an unusual monsoon hits, and we wake up on an island completely surrounded by something like the Niagara River (but a roiling dark-brown sludge of water, tree limbs, boulders, flowing at 40 or 50 miles an hour)...standing on the roof of the Outfitter Caribou.

With the crazy unprecedented (in modern times) climate we have been experiencing, the Southwest back-country has been less enticing for us to explore, and the Southeast coast gives me weather nightmares now.

Wow, that's the type of stuff that keeps u up at night??

I live about 18 miles away from both the flood, and mud in Elizabeth Canyon. We too had huge flows in our buttes of East Lake Los Angeles. In fact my horse corrals, and run in sheds were undermined, and now I must go fix what the county of los Angeles said could not happen if they did not fix my drainage on their land!!
I am right now getting my tractor to move the 10 tons of fill sand I had delivered this morning, to shore up the sheds, and the corrals. Dang county!! I had been telling them for 3 years that they need to come fix the berms, and drainage, they said it must be because I have so much open area for my horses! WTF??? Do they think I am a moron?
Yeah, I guess they do!! Now I must try to shore up my property, and fix what they don't do.

Most of the drivers had to wait about 8-9 hours for the mud to gel so they could walk out. Watching it on the news, the helicopter flying overhead the truck camper looked to have a full floating rear axle so it may have been a 3/4 ton truck.

Semi trucks with dry vans that were empty were picked up and washed to the side. I load trucks and often run the papers so we're talking about 30,000 pound, or more, vehicles just washed away. Flatbeds that were loaded stayed in place but the mud is up to the trailer decks. These are about 5 feet off the ground.

I was a rescue volunteer for 10 years. I can imagine on the truck camper, the lower part of the truck isn't the only thing brown there.

I drove 58 on Thursday when this was happening on I-5 about 45 minutes of driving away.
Somebody called California "National Disaster Theme Park" years ago during one of the El Ninjo winters.
That just confirms the name.
Bay Area waits for something similar.
Bone dry dirt with dead vegetation will not need much. Just yesterday repaired water pipe for a customer who's yard "Shrink" and pulled the pipe to crack.

Seeing that picture, my first thought was whether he had an absorption or compressor fridge. Funny how the mind works...

But this COULD happen and it's something to keep in the back of one's head while looking for a camping spot in the boondocks. At least on your island, you'd have food/water/shelter :-)

....hah hah; LOL. I could picture that. And, someone with a video camera hovering in a chopper, broadcasting it "live on the evening news" :B

That same TC is in the background of a copyrighted photo in a CBS news article about the mudslides. There are several very large trucks and box trucks in the photo, and they didn't handle the mud any better than the TC did. Location: Highway 58 near Mojave. Article says mud is 2 to 6 feet deep.

CBS story

Should've had a Dually!!!

J/K...I'm glad no one was killed or injured.

See, THAT's the stuff that happens when you put a camper on a half ton... :)

Deb and Ed M wrote:
But this COULD happen and it's something to keep in the back of one's head while looking for a camping spot in the boondocks. At least on your island, you'd have food/water/shelter :-)

You would have everything you would need. But, you would never sleep, wondering if the water/mud would keep rising.