January 2020

January 5. Five days into the new year and decade. It’s beautiful outside, in the upper 60’s – low 70’s, sunny and breezy… and an extremely high cedar pollen count of over 4,000 (high is around 100). Sniff, sneeze, cough. The wind has been strong enough to distribute the pollen. I’m ready for rain to remove it from the air!

No rain since our last visit, and the stream shows it. The weather has been mostly warm, though a few days were at or just below freezing. There’s now bright green algae around the waterfall, and the submerged algae has increased a lot – there are now long strands around the waterfall. The stream is low enough that water is only flowing over a small section of the waterfall. And the flow from the storm culvert has also decreased. The inlet above the waterfall is dry and plants are beginning to grow, and the “sometime island” rocks further upstream in the middle of the stream are clearly dry.

Downstream of the bridge, by the trail crossing, the stream narrows as it flows past the gravel area, then expands again. The narrow area has a few rocks and a piece of a 4×4 post for walkers to cross with dry feet. If the stream remains like this, I expect the wide part just past the gravel extension will end up rather scummy as the temperature warms, due to it being stagnant.

We saw a couple of turtles by the sample site, and above the inlet upstream there were some water walkers. No pigeons or other birds.

As expected given the lack of rainfall, low temperatures and low flow (not completely stagnant), the ecoli was about the same as last month: for 3 ML samples, the two plates with samples from the control site had  about 16 colonies and the upstream control samples had twice that, or 33 colonies.

Observations:

air temp: 12 C
water temp: 12 C
dissolved oxygen 8.25
pH: 7.0
conductance: 530
transparency: > 1.2 meters
nitrates: < 0.3

 

sample site from north bank

sample site and downstream from streamside

trail crossing and gravel

stream around trail crossing

trail crossing area to sample site

stream from bridge to trail crossing from north bank

underwater algae above inlet (3)

water under bridge and downstream

low water under bridge

stream under bridge from middle of streambed

upstream side of water by bridge

stream and algae from culvert

looking upstream from middle of stream

north bank by culvert from middle of streambed

stream from culvert to above waterfall

waterfall area

stream between waterfall and culvert

waterfall area closeup w algae

inlet and upstream

underwater algae above inlet (1)

downstream view from above inlet

sometime island rocks from inlet

dissolved oxygen 8.2