Coastals

Saturday, October 9 is the Coastal's fall gathering. The paddle will be the South Fork of the Shenandoah, Newport to the boat ramp across the river from White House Landing. We'll meet at the boat ramp in Newport at 10:30. Our own Travis Overstreet will be there offering us his paddling expertise. Join us for this annual Tom McCloud Pig Paddle and stay for our evening gathering at Grove Hill Community Center.

I am in.
JJ

After paddling the Shenandoah with Martha, please join us for our Fall Quarterly Gathering at the Grove Hill Community Center (north of Shenandoah, Va). We will be meeting and eating in the (lighted) Pavilion behind the Community Center. Please bring Chili and /or one of the following to share: A-F Side Dish; G-N salad or dessert; O-S dessert; T-Z side dish. The Community Center has electricity, oven, microwave, refrigerator, sinks and restrooms.

After a brief general membership meeting and voting for new Board Members, Travis Overstreet will over basic rescue gear, practice a few basic knots, talk about a few scenarios we would generally run into and have a Q&A at the end.

Planning to be there. The 'doah is running in the 600 - 700 cfs range these days which is a lot better than we've seen in some low years. Mild rain forecasts will hopefully keep it that way. I'm on the fence regarding whether or not to provide aluminum-on-rock sound effects with my Grumman 17'er.

Cheers,

Ken

The South Fork Shenandoah watershed received some locally heavy rains over the past couple of days. "Locally heavy" tends to mean we see relatively sharp spikes in the gauges that are short lived. As I write this the SF Shen gauge near Luray has shown a peak flow of about 2,500 cfs in the past few hours and is dropping.

Short answer, we'll have plenty of water and I'm pretty sure it won't be too much. The forecasts are calling for small amounts of rain.

Gauge geek details follow. Feel free to MEGO on the rest of this. (My Eyes Glaze Over.)

Most of the watershed is drained by the North, Middle, and South Rivers which all come together near the town of Port Republic. The Middle runs into the North which then joins the South to form the SF Shen which flows generally north from there. What we are seeing in Luray today is a bubble from the South and another from the Middle. There is a bubble headed down the North but it's much smaller and farther away. We may see a second peak at Luray, not sure. They may have merged by the time they got there.

My notes pre-date having the Luray gauge online so I have readings from the Front Royal gauge (which is way downstream and which hasn't seen the bubbles yet). I've run sections of the SF Shen up to 2,500 cfs on the Front Royal gauge. Doing a little watershed math that translates to around 2,100 cfs at Luray. This was not too much water. I note that the values we see at Luray need to be taken with a little grain of salt as the gauge may be feeling the effects of bridge construction. I haven't been there lately and so don't know the status of that.

Cheers,

Ken

Exciting news. The Shenandoah should be a lot of fun!

I'm looking forward to seeing if Travis can teach this old dog any new tricks!

Alicia, I wanna see that too!
Take the challenge Travis!

oh, it's not that HE can't do it, it's whether I can!

Ken, thanks for the gauge geek explanation.

Wx forecast Saturday keeps improving, so I am in. Pamela is undecided, but even if she does not paddle she will come to the potluck.

Reese

I'm in. See you tomorrow.

38.583284, -78.595061
Newport boat ramp on the Shenandoah
just north of Kite's store on rt 340