{"id":36423,"date":"2021-02-01T08:30:14","date_gmt":"2021-02-01T08:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=36423"},"modified":"2021-02-01T08:30:15","modified_gmt":"2021-02-01T08:30:15","slug":"rat-creek-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2021\/02\/01\/rat-creek-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Rat Creek: a large washout generated by an atmospheric river in California"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rat Creek: a large washout generated by an atmospheric river in California<\/h4>\n

Last week a large atmospheric river rainfall event struck California<\/a>.\u00a0 It dumped large amounts of rainfall on several of the large areas affected by the terrible 2020 wildfire season<\/a>.\u00a0 As I have noted previously, heavy rainfall shortly after a wildfire is a recipe for damaging mudflows<\/a>.\u00a0 This time was no exception.<\/p>\n

The most dramatic event occurred at Rat Creek in the Big Sur, on State Highway 1 between San Francisco and Los Angeles.\u00a0 The best image that I have found of this event is this one:-<\/p>\n

\"The

The washout at Rat Creek on State Highway 1 in California. Image published by the San Francisco Chronicle<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

China News has also published a good overview of the washout:-<\/p>\n

\"Overview

Overview of the washout at Rat Creek in California. Image published by China News<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

The San Francisco Chronicle has a really high quality pictorial explanation for the washout at Rat Creek<\/a>.\u00a0 Upstream of the site of the washout is a large area burnt by the fire:-<\/p>\n

\"The

The location of the washout at Rat Creek. Map published by the San Francisco Chronicle<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

The Dolan Fire<\/a> burnt an area of about 52,000 hectares, starting on 18 August 2020.\u00a0 It burnt for many weeks; on 8 September 2020 15 firefighters were severely injured whilst fighting the fire.\u00a0 There is a high probability that the fire was started deliberately.\u00a0 As the map above shows, Rat Creek drains an area partially burnt by the fire.\u00a0 The images of the aftermath of the washout show large volumes of timber, which would be as expected for a post-wildfire mudflow.<\/p>\n

Of course the amount of overland flow generated in wildfire areas means that the gully will have dealt with a larger than normal volume of flow, with a higher density, generating the unusual level of erosion. The road bed was on erodible material, possibly weathered rock and some fill?<\/p>\n

The road will be closed to allow repairs to be completed. No estimate has yet been provided as to how long this will last.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rat Creek: a large post wildfire washout has been generated on State Highway 1 in the Big Sur in California<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":36426,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[137,469,641,468,725,48,30612,170],"class_list":["post-36423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-landslide-report","tag-california","tag-featured","tag-mudflow","tag-n-america","tag-north-america","tag-usa","tag-washout","tag-wildfire"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36423\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}