Yesterday was a great day to see the amazing power of streams at their strongest. I visited a number of spots in the Rockfish River valley and saw the impacts of the heavy rains during the last several days. A good sign is that, even with so much runoff reaching the North Fork of the Rockfish and the creeks feeding it, the streams were still not loading with mud like you could see in many streams yesterday. This is a good demonstration of the value of relatively protected watersheds and forests.
I could see that in some other streams the weakened and erodes banks were being eaten away at a great rate. Streams have by far their greatest power to tear away at the bed and banks when flows are at bank-full levels. The importance of controlling both the quality and quantity of water running off the land is clearly demonstrated during these kinds of conditions.
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