Western washington mudslides

Through Sunday the National Weather Service NWS peppered the state with flash flood warnings as emergency crews rushed to evacuate towns hit hardest by the storm. Power poles were downed and hundreds of thousands of people in the North Bay were left without electricity.

In just one day, towns in southern Marin reported more than 1ft of rain. Mount Tamalpais saw more than It was the rainiest day the city had ever seen during the month of October.

About miles to the north, the California highway patrol closed a stretch of State Route 70 in Butte and Plumas counties because of multiple landslides within the vast Dixie fire burn scar.

Hurricane-force winds also pummeled the region with gusts so strong it broke the equipment used to measure them in some cities. In the Santa Cruz mountains the wind was records at nearly 90mph and to the north trucks were toppled as they crossed bridges. With thousands of unhoused residents exposed to the elements, officials in the Bay Area opened emergency shelters and organizations posted pleas for help for those whose tents were overcome by the storm.

By Sunday evening, all beds in a San Francisco storm shelter were full. Mudslides occurred north of Seattle as well, effectively shutting down train service that connected the city to Canada, Sheehan said.

But shutting down the Portland-to-Seattle run has "a much bigger impact that affects a lot more people," she said.

The larger mudslide occurred six miles north of Vancouver on Saturday evening, said Gus Melonas, a spokesman for the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, which owns the tracks.

An adjacent freight line that carries up to 40 trains a day was also affected by the mudslide, and crews were working to reopen that line Sunday, he said. Most of western Washington was under flood watches or warnings Sunday afternoon, the National Weather Service reported. Park Passes. Technical Announcements. Employees in the News. Emergency Management. Survey Manual. The following is an updated version of a story first published in March of The spider was equipped with a seismometer mounted on the far left leg to track ground shaking and GPS a dome-shaped instrument on the upper mast to track subtle ground movement.

Data was transmitted via telemetry tall, white cylindrical antenna mounted on the steel trunk to USGS field crews. USGS-Cascades Volcano Observatory field crews hiked to the location three months later to retrieve the spider after the search-and-rescue operations had concluded and the landslide had partially stabilized.

The Oso landslide, also known as the SR landslide, occurred in northwest Washington state on March 22, , leading to devastating loss of life and destruction of property.

Landslide debris blocked the North Fork Stillaguamish River, destroyed about 40 homes and other structures, and buried nearly a mile of State Route Most tragically, it caused 43 fatalities in the community of Steelhead Haven near Oso, Washington.

Oso was emblematic of a worst-case landslide scenario. As such, U. Geological Survey scientists have identified it as a key geological-hydrological event that can help explain and inform our understanding of the potential effects of landslides in other settings in the United States and worldwide. USGS scientists have been studying this event since the landslide occurred.

Shortly following the landslide, the USGS assisted state and local agencies by providing emergency landslide monitoring and flood threat information to ensure that if the landslide moved again, warning could be provided to emergency response teams involved in rescue and recovery efforts.

These spiders, which were placed on and near the landslide, contained high-precision GPS units for detecting landslide movement as well as geophones for detecting small vibrations. USGS scientists also provided immediate data on water levels and river discharge from an existing permanent streamgage located downstream on the North Fork Stillaguamish River at Arlington. Immediately following the event, the USGS also installed three rapid-deployment gages and three buoys to measure flow, sediment, and lake levels.

Over the past five years, scientists have examined a long list of factors which led to the landslide, including soil, water, and climatic conditions. Published findings from USGS studies are already being used by planners and emergency response officials to understand the context in which the landslide occurred and the potential impacts of landslides like Oso.

USGS scientists continue to study the site to gain new insights that only such a significant, though unfortunate, event can reveal. USGS published research includes maps showing the relative ages of landslides similar in style and geographically near Oso, models that showed how quickly the landside mobilized, and information about the expected response of the North Fork Stillaguamish River to the ongoing erosion of the millions of tons of material deposited as a result of the landslide.

USGS researchers are now nearing the conclusion of a five-year study that mapped the landslide in detail in order to understand the mobility of the event -- that is, to understand why the landslide traveled so far. The USGS has been conducting field work, soils laboratory testing, and additional analyses to identify the likely causes of the large mobility of the Oso landslide.