Portneuf River May 14 Update

 So whazzup with the so-called Portneuf River flooding this spring.  Well, in a word: Nothing.  We thought we were staging to see a classic flood in a small watershed's little river.  Nothing of that sort happened....at all.  Yes, the Portnuef technically rose into so-called moderate flood level.  However, as you can see from the Pocatello Greenbelt webcam below, that's not exactly what we normally consider a "flood" in the traditional sense of the word.  

The Portneuf came up to a peak level of 10.54 feet and has been flated pretty much ever since...going on maybe two weeks now.  Looking at the USGS webcam, we can see the river rise or fall a tenth of an inch now and then.  real scintillating stuff, eh?

We first became interested in the Portneuf along about the tip of the red arrow.  Since then we've realized there's absolutely no sense of urgency to show up at any particular time to see the Portneuf in "flood."  It's going to look just about the same every day.  And it's going to stay at this level for awhile.

You can see that the flow forecast shows the Portneuf rock solid at its current (sic) level./

This is Mount Putnam as seen from the south side of Idaho Falls about 35 miles away from out camera.
There is still a lot of snow left on Mount Putnam.  (The black line is an irrigation pivot pipe.)

The top of Mt. Putnam as seen in our photo is Point "X" on this map.  The Upper Portneuf Watershed is enclose in the approx. red boundary.  The Ghost town of Chesterfield is at point "I".

This map clip shows Putnam, Chesterfield and Lava Hot Springs (Point "N"). We're hoping to finally do a short Road Trip down thataway this week, maybe leaving Tuesday and returning Friday. Our main goal is to soak in Lava Hot Springs.  However, we will definitely take time to drive as far as we can into the Upper Portneuf and see what can be seen.  It's all a "learning experience," right? RIGHT!