Intense storm washes out Highway 1 in Big Sur, again
USGS researchers respond to coastal hazards and wildfires: The intense storm that hit California’s coast between January 26 and 28, 2021, blew out a portion of Highway 1 near Big Sur. USGS works diligently to provide officials with science to help inform their decision making before, during, and after such events. Here, we present photos that describe this work.
The coastal change team at the USGS Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center in Santa Cruz, California sent a reconnaissance flight over the area on Friday, January 29th, and snapped dramatic photos above the Rat Creek drainage. The deluge from the atmospheric river storm of January 26-28 washed mud, boulders, ash, and trees downslope from areas burned by last fall's Doran Fire. The culverts at Rat Creek, which normally allow Rat Creek waters to flow easily under Highway 1 rather than over it, became clogged with the debris. Continued heavy rain was no match for the clogged culverts, causing water to flood out and eventually erode the cliffside to the point of catastrophic collapse.
USGS-produced hazard maps of the denuded, burned hillsides around Big Sur, California, are critical for planning and emergency agencies, like the National Weather Service, to help save lives and property. The maps help officials identify potentially dangerous conditions, so they can issue warnings and sometimes evacuation orders and close roadways before and during extreme weather events like the one that hit on January 26-28, 2021.
The USGS landslide team monitors and continues to update the hazard map models based on data collected in burn areas. This information improves future models and provides better hazard assessments used by officials for emergency response and decision making. Many of the steep hillsides burned and denuded in California fires repel water rather than soak it in. This condition, called hydrophobic soil and caused by the fire’s hot temperatures, causes water to flow over land instead of soaking in, picking up surface debris along the way with potentially devastating force once it reaches people, communities, or property.
USGS collects data about the contaminants found in water flowing off the burned areas. To do this, geochemists collect sediment samples right after a fire, before the rain, and periodically return for additional sampling to understand how contaminants move through the ecosystem.
Read more: “Bringing USGS Science Expertise Together for Natural Hazards in Big Sur, CA”
Related Content
Remote Sensing Coastal Change
Related Content
Remote Sensing Coastal Change
Get Our News
These items are in the RSS feed format (Really Simple Syndication) based on categories such as topics, locations, and more. You can install and RSS reader browser extension, software, or use a third-party service to receive immediate news updates depending on the feed that you have added. If you click the feed links below, they may look strange because they are simply XML code. An RSS reader can easily read this code and push out a notification to you when something new is posted to our site.