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1948 Columbia River Flood
The 1948 Columbia River flood (or Vanport Flood) was a regional flood that occurred in the Pacific Northwest of the United States and Canada. Large portions of the Columbia River watershed where impacted, including the Portland area, Eastern Washington, northeastern Oregon, Idaho Panhandle, northwestern Montana, and southeastern British Columbia. A publication of the U.S. Geological Survey in 1949 stated property damage reached $102.7 million (1949 value), 250,000 acres of farmland were flooded, 20,000 acres of land were damaged or destroyed, and at least 16 died in the flood (the phrasing suggests these were deaths from the Vanport community); estimates for total deaths from the flood go as high as 102. Among the damage was the complete destruction of Vanport, in the Portland metropolitan area, which was the second largest city in Oregon at the time. The flood was largely caused by rapid melting of above-average snowpack by heavy precipitation and warm temperatures. It remains t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vanport, Oregon
Vanport, sometimes referred to as Vanport City or Kaiserville, was a city of wartime public housing in Multnomah County, Oregon, United States, between the contemporary Portland city boundary and the Columbia River. It was destroyed in the 1948 Columbia River flood and not rebuilt. It sat on what is currently the site of Delta Park and the Portland International Raceway. History Vanport construction began in August 1942 to house the workers at the wartime Kaiser Shipyards in Portland and Vancouver, Washington. Vanport—a portmanteau of "Vancouver" and "Portland"—was home to 40,000 people, about 40 percent of them African-American, making it Oregon's second-largest city at the time, and the largest public housing project in the nation. After the war, Vanport lost more than half of its population, dropping to 18,500, as many wartime workers left the area. However, there was also an influx of returning World War II veterans. In order to attract veterans and their famili ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Weather Service
The National Weather Service (NWS) is an agency of the United States federal government that is tasked with providing weather forecasts, warnings of hazardous weather, and other weather-related products to organizations and the public for the purposes of protection, safety, and general information. It is a part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) branch of the Department of Commerce, and is headquartered in Silver Spring, Maryland, within the Washington metropolitan area. The agency was known as the United States Weather Bureau from 1890 until it adopted its current name in 1970. The NWS performs its primary task through a collection of national and regional centers, and 122 local Weather Forecast Offices (WFOs). As the NWS is an agency of the U.S. federal government, most of its products are in the public domain and available free of charge. History Calls for the creation of a government weather bureau began as early as 1844, when the electric ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trail, British Columbia
Trail is a city in the West Kootenay region of the Interior of British Columbia, Canada. It was named after the Dewdney Trail, which passed through the area. The town was first called Trail Creek or Trail Creek Landing, and the name was shortened to Trail in 1897. Geography Trail has an area of . The city is located on both banks of the Columbia River, approximately north of the United States border. This section of the Columbia River valley is located between the Monashee Mountains to the west and the Selkirk Mountains to the east. The Columbia flows directly north-south from Castlegar, turns east near downtown Trail, and then meets the Canada–United States border at Waneta and the Pend d'Oreille River. Summer climate in Trail is generally hot and dry with moderately cool nights. Temperatures often exceed during summer afternoons, average . Thunderstorms are common during the late-Spring and Summer season, often moving into the valley from the south. The fall months ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kootenai River
The Kootenay or Kootenai river is a major river in the Northwest Plateau, in southeastern British Columbia, Canada, and northern Montana and Idaho in the United States. It is one of the uppermost major tributaries of the Columbia River, the largest North American river that empties into the Pacific Ocean. The Kootenay River runs from its headwaters in the Kootenay Ranges of the Canadian Rockies, flowing from British Columbia's East Kootenay region into northwestern Montana, then west into the northernmost Idaho Panhandle and returning to British Columbia in the West Kootenay region, where it joins the Columbia at Castlegar. The river is known as the Kootenay in Canada and by the Ktunaxa Nation, and Kootenai in the United States and by the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and Kootenai Tribe of Idaho. Fed mainly by glaciers and snow melt, the river drains a rugged, sparsely populated region of more than ; over 70 percent of the basin is in Canada. From its ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yakima River
The Yakima River is a tributary of the Columbia River in south central and eastern Washington state, named for the indigenous Yakama people. Lewis and Clark mention in their journals that the Chin-nâm pam (or the Lower Snake River Chamnapam Nation) called the river ''Tâpe têtt'' (also rendered ''Tapteete''), possibly from the French ''tape-tête'', meaning "head hit". The length of the river from headwaters to mouth is , with an average drop of . It is the longest river entirely in Washington state. Course The river rises in the Cascade Range at an elevation of at Keechelus Dam on Keechelus Lake near Snoqualmie Pass, near Easton. The river flows through that town, skirts Ellensburg, passes the city of Yakima, and continues southeast to Richland, where it flows into the Columbia River creating the Yakima River Delta at an elevation of . About 9 million years ago, the Yakima River flowed south from near Vantage to the Tri-Cities, and then turned west straight for the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ellensburg, Washington
Ellensburg is a city in and the county seat of Kittitas County, Washington, United States. It is located just east of the Cascade Range near the junction of Interstate 90 and Interstate 82. The population was 18,666 at the 2020 census. and was estimated to be 19,596 in 2021. The city is located along the Yakima River in the Kittitas Valley, an agricultural region that extends east towards the Columbia River. The valley is a major producer of timothy hay, which is processed and shipped internationally. Ellensburg is also the home of Central Washington University (CWU). Ellensburg, originally named Ellensburgh for the wife of town founder John Alden Shoudy, was founded in 1871 and grew rapidly in the 1880s following the arrival of the Northern Pacific Railway. The city was once a leading candidate to become the state capital of Washington, but its campaign was scuppered by a major fire in 1889. History John Alden Shoudy arrived in the Kittitas Valley in 1871 and purchased ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cle Elum, Washington
Cle Elum ( ) is a city in Kittitas County, Washington, United States. The population was 1,872 at the 2010 census. About by car from Seattle, Cle Elum is a popular area for camping and outdoor activities. History Native history Cle Elum was originally inhabited by the Kittitas band of the Yakama tribe. The tribe fished salmon, steelhead, and trout from the Yakima River. The Salmon la Sac trails in the northern area of the region were created by the Kittitas people and were used as layovers for journeys into the higher altitudes of the Cascade Range. In 1855, after the arrival of Catholic missionaries, and the passing through of settlers and coal miners on their way to the Puget Sound, a treaty resulted in the Yakamas ceding most of their land for a reservation in the lower Yakima Valley and guaranteed access to fish, including what would later be incorporated as Cle Elum. By 1859, the Kittitas had been forced to relocate to the Yakama Indian Reservation. Early years and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ephrata, Washington
Ephrata ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Grant County, Washington, United States. Its population was 8,477 at the 2020 census. History Ephrata was officially incorporated on June 21, 1909 and was given the county seat for the newly created Grant County. The settlement of Ephrata is quite recent. There was no known settlement until 1886, just three years before Washington gained statehood. The horse rancher Frank Beezley was the first to settle near the natural springs, thus the area was known as Beezley Springs. As the climate and topography were not promising to settlement, the entire region remained sparsely populated until several federal congressional actions, including the Northern Pacific Land Grant Act, the Homestead Act, and Desert Claims Act, encouraged the settlement of this semi-arid desert-like area. Originally, Douglas County spread over the entire territory of the Big Bend of the Columbia River. In 1909, the Washington State legislature divided it, creating ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flash Flood
A flash flood is a rapid flooding of low-lying areas: washes, rivers, dry lakes and depressions. It may be caused by heavy rain associated with a severe thunderstorm, hurricane, or tropical storm, or by meltwater from ice or snow flowing over ice sheets or snowfields. Flash floods may also occur after the collapse of a natural ice or debris dam, or a human structure such as a man-made dam, as occurred before the Johnstown Flood of 1889. Flash floods are distinguished from regular floods by having a timescale of fewer than six hours between rainfall and the onset of flooding. Flash floods are a significant hazard, causing more fatalities in the U.S. in an average year than lightning, Tornado, tornadoes, or Tropical cyclone, hurricanes. Flash floods can also deposit large quantities of sediments on floodplains and can be destructive of vegetation cover not adapted to frequent flood conditions. Causes Flash floods most often occur in dry areas that have recently receive ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ridge (meteorology)
A ridge or barometric ridge is a term in meteorology describing an elongated area of relatively high atmospheric pressure compared to the surrounding environment, without being a closed circulation. It is associated with an area of maximum anticyclonic curvature of wind flow. The ridge originates in the center of an anticyclone and sandwiched between two low-pressure areas, and the locus of the maximum curvature is called the ''ridge line''. This phenomenon is the opposite of a trough. Description Ridges can be represented in two ways: * On surface weather maps, the pressure isobars form contours where the maximum pressure is found along the axis of the ridge. * In upper-air maps, geopotential height isohypses form similar contours where the maximum defines the ridge. Related weather Given the direction of the winds around an anticyclonic circulation and the fact that weather systems move from west to east: *ahead of an upper-ridge, the airflow that comes from the polar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Northern California
Northern California (colloquially known as NorCal) is a geographic and cultural region that generally comprises the northern portion of the U.S. state of California. Spanning the state's northernmost 48 counties, its main population centers include the San Francisco Bay Area (anchored by the cities of San Jose, San Francisco, and Oakland), the Greater Sacramento area (anchored by the state capital Sacramento), the Redding, California, area south of the Cascade Range, and the Metropolitan Fresno area (anchored by the city of Fresno). Northern California also contains redwood forests, along with most of the Sierra Nevada, including Yosemite Valley and part of Lake Tahoe, Mount Shasta (the second-highest peak in the Cascade Range after Mount Rainier in Washington), and most of the Central Valley, one of the world's most productive agricultural regions. The 48-county definition is not used for the Northern California Megaregion, one of the 11 megaregions of the United St ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Canadian Rockies
The Canadian Rockies (french: Rocheuses canadiennes) or Canadian Rocky Mountains, comprising both the Alberta Rockies and the British Columbian Rockies, is the Canadian segment of the North American Rocky Mountains. It is the easternmost part of the Canadian Cordillera, which is the northern segment of the North American Cordillera, the expansive system of interconnected mountain ranges between the Interior Plains and the Pacific Coast that runs northwest–southeast from central Alaska to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Mexico. Canada officially defines the Rocky Mountains system as the mountain chains east of the Rocky Mountain Trench extending from the Liard River valley in northern British Columbia to the Albuquerque Basin in New Mexico, not including the Mackenzie, Richardson and British Mountains/Brooks Range in Yukon and Alaska (which are all included as the "Arctic Rockies" in the United States' definition of the Rocky Mountains system). The Canadian Rockies, bei ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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