Nov. 30, 2012 — The National Weather Service in Reno has issued a flood warning for the Susan River at Susanville from Sunday morning to Monday afternoon or until the warning is cancelled.

At 9 a.m. Friday, the stage was 9 feet and flood stage is 12 feet. Moderate flooding is forecast, and the river is expected to rise above flood stage by Sunday morning and continue to rise to near 13 feet by late Sunday morning. The river is expected to fall below flood stage by Sunday evening.

Impact

At 13 feet moderate flooding is forecast in Susanville from Lassen Street downstream along Riverside Drive. Some homes along the river may have moderate flood affects, especially on Carroll Street. Significant lowland flooding is forecast below Susanville in the Johnstonville, Leavitt Lake, Standish and Litchfield areas. Rural roads and bridges in these areas flood, and water levels are forecast to be similar to those experience during the flood of March 13,1983.

Local update

This is an update from Watermaster Jeff White in the field about 8:30 a.m. Friday, Nov. 30.

White reports he has been checking CDEC and the Johnstonville Dam every few hours through the night.

  •Johnstonville Dam is at its normal high water mark now, with one board in the spillway /overflow. 

•AB canal is taking a lot of water to Leavitt Lake so everyone needs to make sure their dams are down and clear. 

•All stock fences across AB should be removed as they collect debris. 

•Last year in a high water event, AB couldn’t deliver all necessary water to the lake due to dams still up and collecting debris. That caused Johnstonville dam to back up unnecessarily and boards had to be pulled fast and warnings sent to downstream users. Please check all your dams, fences in waterways & diversions

For those of you who don’t use CDEC;

•Susan River at Lassen Street is coming up about a foot an hour now at 8.56 feet and coming up about half a foot in depth an hour.

•Willow Creek at Colony Dam is coming up gradually 20 cubic-feet-per-second at 4 a.m. and 21 cfs at 6:45 am

•Susan River at Colony is at 9 cfs now. It was 10 cfs last night late, went down a couple feet overnight and is on its way back up.

·Lower Susan dams and diversions with the help of property owners have been removed/adjusted over the past few days to allow maximum flow while minimizing flooding as much as possible.

But be aware, high water is coming!

·Baxter Creek boards were removed a couple days ago to prevent any problems while I’m watching the upper river. Hopefully the fast water there will clean the Baxter ditch some.

·Woodstock is shut way down, as it receives the run-off from Walmart, Big O and other parking lots, making it run high during rain events.

·Brockman receives some water from Woodstock, and returns it to the river. There is one old dam approximately 2 feet high in Brockman between Travis and Center that causes some ponding in that central section of Brockman.

If you need help, call the watermaster at 310-0259.