The latest sand deluge hits the beach

While the sand that hit the beach of the Elwha delta this summer was exciting, things really slowed down during the fall, and by October most of it had transported away (for more on this check out our poster from AGU 2012). The autumn beach, at least at my monitoring sites, was almost as cobbly as it had been at the beginning of the year. But perhaps due to the higher flows over the past few weeks (noting, though, that there still hasn't been a flow over 10,000 cfs this winter) and perhaps due in some way to the release of sand and gravel from the lowering of the Glines Canyon dam, the spigot has turned back on. Starting in mid-November a new pulse of sand arrived at the river mouth, this one easily larger, in both area and volumetric extent, than the one associated with Aldwell that flowed to the mouth of the river between April and July of this year. More to come on this, but here are a few panoramic views of the shoreline taken on the east side of the river.

This first shot was taken yesterday, 10 December 2012 at 4:40pm, looking shoreward from a point on my Line 164, about 300 meters east of the river mouth. This is a site I monitor routinely. The photo was taken from just above Mean Lower Low Water.

There was very little sand retained at this site just two weeks ago.

This next shot was taken from atop the berm on the east shore of the river, just upstream from the mouth, at about 4:30 pm.

Its not stunningly obvious given the perspective, but if you look close in the far field of this pano, to the right, you can see the two long shore-perpindicular bars that have built out from the river mouth. Both extend ~100+ meters or more at this point. Both weren't there a month ago, at least anywhere near that length or extent.

And finally, here is a view of the bar built on the west side of the mouth...couldn't pano this one, but this shot was taken at sunset on 10 December, at a water level of about -0.25 m MLLW. I walked out about 100m on to this brand new sand bar and shot this view back towards Place Road

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