The Rexburg Idaho Flood of July 15 2014 - What happened!?

During the late afternoon of Tuesday July 15, 2014, scattered showers accompanied by hail started to fall in Rexburg, Idaho.  It wasn't long before the showers became a full-blown thunderstorm of Midwestern or Great Plains proportions!

It is unusual for rain showers in this part of the state, even heavy ones by local standards to last more than 5-10 minutes before prevailing winds push them farther up the Snake River Plain.  This time, however, the storm which was extremely localized and extremely heavy stalled out right above the city of Rexburg for about 40 minutes.

Weather radar (see below) showed that the storm was located directly above Rexburg, and areas just a few miles north and south of the city received no measurable precipitation.  Official reports from an automated weather station at the Rexburg Municipal Airport reported a total of 1.14" of precipitation, but unofficial reports from higher elevations at the south end of town suggest that over 2" of rain probably fell during the storm.

The downpour produced flash floods through the city and immersed low-lying intersections and residential areas.  The massive amount of water that fell also produced back pressure in city storm drains and sewer lines that caused water to gush upward through drains and toilets into buildings and homes.

This was by all accounts a once-in-a-generation weather event for the city.  I moved here in 2002 and in all that time we never had a downpour like this one.  Life-long residents say that you have to go back over 30 years before you would come across a comparable rainstorm.

Click on this link to see images of the aftermath:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/davarav/the-12-things-you-saw-at-the-byui-flood-last-night-ulbz

You might be thinking, "Come on, one or two inches of rain doesn't sound like all that much," especially to people who live in areas where this kind of storm is relatively routine.  So why all the flooding?  What happened!?

Here are a few basic facts:

1. Rexburg is located in eastern Idaho, an area that typically receives only about 15" of rain annually.
2. Most of Rexburg is built on level ground at an elevation of 4850', while the SE quarter of town is built on a gradual rise topping out at 5150'.
3. Because Rexburg is built in a semiarid area, it is not engineered to accommodate large amounts of rain runoff from a storm like this one.  It is, however, designed to accommodate significant amounts of water from snow melt runoff in the spring that are released more gradually.  Ironically, the city was in the middle of installing an upgraded storm drainage system in the SE corner town designed to reduce surface runoff when the storm hit.
4. A significant amount of new residential building in Rexburg has occurred at the higher elevations, thus greatly increasing the proportion of area covered by roads, driveways, sidewalks, parking lots, etc., and reducing the amount of green space that is good at soaking up precipitation.  

OK, back to what happened...why the flooding?

This is a topographical map of Rexburg, Idaho (click on the map for a larger view):

The arrows on the map below show two of the tracks where water flooded most severely - remember, surface water run-off is mostly going to follow roads in a situation like this (click on the map for a larger view):

If you look at the topographical map below, the bottom-right corner has the highest elevation, and the hill slopes off to the NW.  OK, find the circular water tank located just south of the center of the photograph.  The four houses on the south side of the road, just east of that water tank, were among the most heavily damaged in the city.   Why?  (Click on the map for a larger view.)

I admit that I'm no hydrographer, but I watched this storm develop and watched the water flow from my house, which is just around the corner from those houses.  

This is probably what happened, at least in this localized area.

First of all, the storm was extremely intense, dropping a significant amount of water in a very short time - more than this area hardly ever sees in a single storm.  If you follow the topographic map's contour lines you will see that they run generally from the SW to the NE corners of the map.  Unless otherwise constrained, surface runoff water will flow downhill perpendicular to those lines.  

Rain that fell on the upper part of town quickly filled the storm drains so lots of the water moved as surface runoff.  Look at the housing development just north of the "5150" contour line marker.  This housing area slopes downward to the NW, and all roads in in converge at a low spot where the road seems to bulge upward toward the NW.  There is a walking path easement there that passes between that housing area and a neighboring apartment complex.  Water from the housing development was forced through the narrow opening along that path between neighboring houses and joined water that fell on the apartment complex's lot.  I walked that area again last night and saw that grass there was literally abraded down to nearly nothing by flowing water, sand, gravel, etc., as the water swept through in sheets across the parking lot.  The vulnerable houses were located directly in at the path of this flooding water.  Water flooded down into these houses' back yards, into basement window wells, broke those windows inward, and flooded the basements all the way to the ceiling before also breaking out basement windows on the sides and front of the house.

Of course this water was not done moving there...it was subsequently channeled largely along streets and roadways in the northerly and westerly directions.  The next thing all this water hit was the BYUI-Idaho campus where water gushed along sidewalks and walkways, streets, into quads, and even through some buildings.  This closed campus for the rest of that evening, but it reopened the next day.

Water continued to flow downhill to the lower part of town, flooding out virtually all of Main Street and many low-lying areas and intersections as water from the hill joined water that fell over the rest of town.

In the meantime, a second area hit with intense flooding was the "Hidden Valley" housing development.  This development is indicated by the blue arrow along the right side of the image above.  There's a reason it's called "Hidden Valley"...it's built up into the mouth of a valley.  That valley exists because water from fields above drains through there.  Of course this area was hard hit because water from the entire area above that development was channeled right down through the middle of the valley!  A friend who lives there has a home that backs onto a shallow drainage depression designed to channel moderate amounts of water away from homes there.  He said that by the end of the storm that the depression had been eroded into a gully seven feet deep! I heard secondhand reports that many families were displaced from their homes in that development.

Then while all of this was going on many of the student apartments around town also suffered significant flooding.  This stems largely from the fact that for whatever reason, it's been a tradition to build the first floor of student apartments so that their first floors are partially below grade.  This way walkways along these apartments put a person about 3-4' below grade (the level of the ground).  I saw MANY photographs posted showing flooding to the doorknob-level in these apartments.

Suffice it to say that this was a mess.

Interestingly, the overall attitude associated with this flood appeared to be a mixture of partying, fun, horror, and depression, depending on how you were affected.

As soon as it became clear just how bad things were in some areas and for some people, however, the community really pitched in to start to clean up.  The community response to this flood has been an inspiration to me.  As soon as the rain was gone and the floodwaters were passed, people were out all over town checking on one another to make sure everyone was all right and to see if there was any damage and pitching in to help.    

Sadly, people in this area do not have flood insurance.  Sure, if a pipe breaks and you get flooding or water damage that way in your home then homeowners insurance will cover it, but that kind of insurance will not cover things like this freak storm/flooding, since it falls under the category of "Acts of God" for which insurance companies are not accountable. 

There you have it...what happened during the Rexburg storm and flood of July 15, 2014. 

Field Marine Biology at BYU-Idaho - Spring 2013

I'm pleased to announce that I just received administrative approval to offer, for the first time ever, a field experience in marine biology for BYU-Idaho students.  This field experience will be offered during the first block of the Spring Semester 2013.

Students who participate in the experience will enroll in Marine Biology (BIO 314 - 3 credits), Undergraduate Research (BIO 499R - 3 credits) and, 1-credit of Readings in Biology (BIO 401R).  

The field portion of the experience will be taught at the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology (OIMB) on Coos Bay, Charleston, OR.  The OIMB is the marine biological station of the University of Oregon and has a beautiful campus.  I visited the OIMB for 4 days last summer and was extremely impressed by the facilities and the nearby habitats for learning and teaching.

The photo below shows the main entrance to the labs with a research building in the foreground and the administration building in the background. 

All of the buildings at the labs share a similar look and style.  Very Oregon!  Very Beautiful!  

This building below houses the dining hall and kitchen.  The upper floor is devoted to dormitory space.  When it is meal time one of the cooks comes out onto to this building's porch and rings a large, loud, brass bell.  You don't want to miss that - or the food!    

The photo below is one of the two main teaching lab buildings.  Each of these buildings houses two teaching labs.  One is a dry lab building, while the other building's labs have running seawater tables.  The upper floor of these buildings are also dormitories.  

This is the teaching lab our group will use when we are not in the field.  The lab accommodates 20 students, and this (and dorm space) is what sets the limit to the number of students who can participate in the trip. 

These are the seawater tables that run along one wall of the lab where students can hold marine animals for demonstration purposes, and where lab experiments can be carried out.

If you've spent any time at all at a marine station, you know that there's a volleyball court someplace.  Here is the one at OIMB.  Volleyball seems to be the sport of marine biologists everywhere. 

This photo shows some of the grounds at the OIMB. It's a beautiful and well-kept campus.

This is the OIMB library.  It's a very nice place with hard copy holdings focusing mainly on the biota and habitats of the Pacific NW.  While you are at the labs, you have access to the University of Oregon's on-line databases, etc.  So, it's a pretty sweet deal!

Even the maintenance buildings and motor pool look nice!

If you walk farther up the road, past the main lab buildings you will come to a row of cottages where visiting researchers and visiting instructors are housed.  They are named appropriately, Cottages 1-4.  

If you continue all the way to the end of the road, passing a housing complex for the US Coast Guard you will reach the Boathouse lecture hall, shown here.  This building was built originally to house rescue boats for the Coast Guard.  Today it serves as a large lecture hall for the OIMB.  Originally, there were large doors that opened, and rescue boats could be run down a sloping pier into the water.

Right next to the Boathouse is the Beach Cottage.  This small 2-BR cottage was, according to Craig Young, Director of the OIMB, the first building that was built for the Coast Guard when it was established during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt in 1908.  Before 1908 the US Life Saving Service, the Coast Guard's predecessor patrolled America's beaches and treacherous shores.  

Charleston is a working harbor, and the marina/harbor is right across the street from the OIMB.  Also anchored in this marina is the OIMB's research vessel, the RV Pluteus.  While we were there it was being outfitted with a heavy duty winch in order to allow it to handle the station's newest acquisition, a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) that can go as deep as 600 meters.

This is the RV Pluteus.  My students and I will go out on the Pluteus at least once to do plankton tows and bottom dredges to collect samples for analysis in the lab.  

The OIMB is right across the street from a commercial cannery and working fishing harbor.  This means that the operations across the street are industrial and commercial.  In other words, there's not really anyplace to go right next to the marine station, which really helps students focus on their work without a lot of outside distractions.  So it's not all bad!

The next few photos show the intertidal zone in front of the Boat House at low tide.  We were there during a very nice low tide series.  It had to be at least -2.0'.  You can also see the remains of the old pier where the rescue boats were run out into the water.

If you continue on beyond the Beach House you will come down over a small cliff onto the OIMB beach. It's a small pocket beach between the shoreline and a breakwater.  My daughter Emily is in the foreground.

The rocky intertidal zone beyond the beach looks like it's in great shape - not very trampled.  There is LOTS of algae and surf grass, as well as a nice diversity of invertebrate animals.  It'll be a nice place to introduce students to this habitat, and it's just a short stroll away from the lab.

I look forward to returning to the OIMB in Spring 2013 with the first group of marine biology field course students.  

Science, religion, and truth

Last fall someone from the BYU-Idaho Communications Office wanted to interview me about FDSDCI 101 - Science Foundations, a general education course required for all students that I had a hand in developing and that I currently teach.  One of the main things we discussed was the relationship between science and religion.  This makes sense since BYU-Idaho is affiliated with and is supported by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and because science and religion are both important parts of the general education of all of our students.  

We covered several topics during the interview, but central to our discussion was the fact that no matter how, where, or when we find truth, a truth will not conflict with any other truth.  This is something that we discuss at the very beginning of each semester in my FDSCI 101 classes.  

That discussion is based in part on an address titled "Truth: The Foundation of Correct Decisions" given by Elder Richard G. Scott in the October 2007 General Conference of the Church.  FYI, Elder Scott is a retired nuclear engineer and now a prominent leader in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.    

You can see his address by clicking this link:

http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2007/10/truth-the-foundation-of-correct-decisions?lang=eng   

In his address, Elder Scott identified inspiration and the scientific method as the two avenues for obtaining/discovering truth.  

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago the campus photographer asked if he could come by my class on the day that we discuss truth..."Sure, no problem."  Well, you can see where this is going...

This afternoon I checked my campus mailbox and found the latest edition of "News and Notes", the BYU-Idaho newsletter for Faculty.  I have to confess that sometimes I don't even flip through them, but this time I sat down and took a look.  Toward the back of the newsletter I looked down and saw...me!?  What in the world!?  Oh...yeah...  

It took a number of months, but the interview, photograph, and story finally came out.  Here it is.  I think they did a good job with it. 

This article gives you an idea of some of my thoughts on the science, religion, and truth.  That is, that any truth, if it is a truth, will not conflict with any other truth, regardless of its source.  


I also know that we not only can, but should be people of faith AND of  learning, including science.


(Originally posted 1-27-2012)

Is "Mr. Blue Sky" here to stay?

May 13, 2011 -

Nice weather has finally reappeared in Rexburg.  It's been a long, cold, gray winter. We had snow on the ground starting in mid-November and it was here through the first part of April, but the weather has (cross your fingers and knock on wood) finally turned!

The weatherman reported last night that it's been 210 days since we last had temperates over 70oF around here.  That's right - it's been 7 months.

The past few days have been clear, sunny, and WARM.  It was warm enough today in fact that a fleece vest was all it took for me to be comfortable at 7:30am when I walked to work.

Everyone seems to be outside enjoying the weather!

Our pasty-pale winter skin is drinking in the rays, and our solar batteries are recharging.  No matter where you look there are students on the grass, runners can be seen all over town, people are biking, working in their yards, and people are smiling!

Here's a shot from the University's webcam looking toward the Spori Quad at 2:30pm today.  It's a happy time on campus.  The sun makes all the difference!

I hope it's warm where you are.  And I hope that this warm Spring weather is here to stay.  (After all, last summer it didn't really warm up until after the 4th of July!)

Here's to a long warm spring/summer!