FLASH FLOOD IN JACUMBA HOT SPRINGS

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By Miriam Raftery, photos by Danielle Cook and Wayne Brammer

September 7, 2014 (Jacumba Hot Springs)—This high desert town in San Diego’s East County is normally characterized by dry washes.  But tonight around 7:30 p.m., the town’s Centennial Committee chair Danielle Cook reports, “I received a call a half hour ago from another Jacumba resident, Bill Pape, saying to "get down to the bridge right away, there is a flash flood here and about 20 of us are gathering to watch it.”

Cook grabbed her camera and headed to the scene.  “I jumped in my car with my camera and raced down. Sure enough, there was water rushing down a tributary of Boundary Creek and Carrizo Gorge and under the bridge on the East side of town where the farm is,” she reports. “The waters were coming from the Mexican side of Jacumba Valley. Water was saturating the fields on the south side of Old Highway 80.”

Ironically, the farm recently ceased operations due to a well run dry.

“The flood certainly created a flurry of excitement,” Cook concludes. “Although we received some rain from the passing storm, apparently the storm dumped a lot of rain on the Mexico side of the valley.”


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Comments

Rain

Yes we live in a desert climate but remember Hurricane Kathleen in 1976. Interstate 8 was washed out and the small town of Ocotillo was nearly destroyed. A friend had a business there that was so damaged that they just abandoned the place.

Weather

Our daughter in Wisconsin always gets a laugh when we talk about our big 1" rains in San Diego.