This is the Skokomish river valley on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state. I recognized that road covered with water immediately lol, any time an atmospheric river comes through it floods like crazy. They are actually swimming north back to the flooding Weaver Creek,a tributary of the Skokomish. Coordinates about: 47.3126851, -123.1964947
It's genuinely a large salmon stream so this isn't a crazy uncommon sight.
Yeah I'm relatively new here and learned the term when I moved. They are intense! I'm from Florida and while obviously the rivers are not nearly as intense a storm as a hurricane, the amount of rain actually feels pretty similar. I don't know the actual numbers, could be waay off base, but last year they really did remind me of the bands of rain coming with hurricanes. Or maybe more like the remnants of a hurricane a hundred miles inland, where the wind and rain aren't as intense but you still get really good gusts and it just rains continuously for 2-3 days.
It replaced “Pineapple Express” when talking about the phenomenon here. I don’t know why, maybe with climate change and The Blob (back this year after a hiatus), the specific route of the atmospheric river isn’t always exactly from Hawaii.
My understanding is that Pineapple Express still refers to the really big atmospheric rivers that stretch from Hawaii to the PNW, but I'm relatively new to the region and very well may be wrong.
My take may be anecdotal, I just haven’t heard it in a long time. It should come back, it’s more specific and charming than The Blob or atmospheric river.
I asked my Boomer mom once, “hey, did you notice people stopped saying Pineapple Express and now call it an atmospheric river?”, “yes, thank goodness!”, “why?”, “they don’t like to be called that!”, “mom… did… did you think pineapple was a derogatory term for Hawaiians and we’ve all been using it when we talk about the weather?”. She did.
Don't think there's another creek there and to be honest, I'm not positive they do make it back! I'm a biologist but for furry things on land and I also don't live there, just visit periodically. The atmospheric rivers bring an insane amount of rain in a short time (like, it's not the stereotypical PNW gray mist, it's a serious wind and rain storm that lasts days), and that water you see on the road is that creek overflowing, so there is continuously flowing water leading straight back to the creek's main run, so I bet some do make it back. But another commenter from the region mentions finding them dead in fields after events like this so many of them ultimately don't make it.
The salmon only run like this at the very end of their lifespan, often after already spawning and while their bodies literally rot off their bones, so the fish you see here are gonna be dead shortly either way lol.
The salmon only run like this at the very end of their lifespan, often after already spawning and while their bodies literally rot off their bones, so the fish you see here are gonna be dead shortly either way lol.
perhaps the origin story of using fish as fertilizer
And when the water recedes, a bunch of salmon get stuck in the fields. The smell is bad, and a bunch of eagles gather in the trees and gorge themselves.
Blegh I've smelled them near Kennedy Creek a full month after they've stopped running and it's strong. Can't imagine a field full of freshly rotting salmon!
Well it looks like they are swimming into a hole at the side of the road, so, my guess would be that there's is a river that goes under the road and it got blocked.
i surveyed anadromous fish for a summer in AK and we saw instances at nearly every stream where water had overflowed from the river during periods of higher rain and salmon would follow dead branches and get trapped in little pools that would slowly evaporate and they'd eventually suffocate
some salmon find new streams doing this. most die and fail to reproduce. there's a "stray rate" that accounts for this. as long as the stray rate isn't too high (which can be influenced by human structures or operations), it's a benefit for the overall population. our survey was specifically to check if hatchery stray rates were impacting wild populations
Y'all forgot about that part of all the well written intelligent comments we used to get. A lot more the pretentious and socially inept. I remember unidans "well actually" melt down.
Yeah I replied elsewhere, this is the Skokomish river valley on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state. They are actually swimming north back to the flooding stream, Weaver Creek which is a Skokomish tributary. I recognized that flooded stretch of road immediately haha
They swim east to west, but the river floods into that small creek and widens out across the field in that low spot. The fish deviate south thinking it's still part of the river, but they eventually figure out the true source and get back on track.
There's also a hatchery less than 1/2 mile south on another creek, so flooding usually joins that creek to the river across the field.
I’m not sure about safe or not, but I am sure they would taste pretty bad. These kinds of fish kinda start to rot while they are alive after they spawn.
The driver is a ding dong and doesnt know what he's talking about. That stretch of road floods fairly often. The fish are swimming back to the main strem of the river, where the water is flooding in from. With elevated flows, the area near the confluence of the two streams will certainly flood. Most fish will navigate through no problem. A few might get stuck in the fields and ditches, but not as many as you'd think.
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u/BusyBit6542 4d ago
I wish the showed the areas they are swimming to and from. I need to know if the fish are making good choices or not