-- when you can track winter rains and river flood levels!
I used to own property near the Willamette River in the Oregon City area in a 500-YR Flood Zone. Every few years the river flooded the river parks nearby and I wondered if this would be the year my property would go under. So far, even the worst flooding (46.04' on February 9, 1996) and all historical floods on record had not reached my property so I was confident that mine would be safe. But whenever the river filled up and flooding was in the news, I still checked to see what current river gauges were being reported before I went to sleep.
Willamette R below Falls at Oregon City - Maximum gage height, 46.04 feet Feb. 9, 1996
If you didn't live in Western Oregon in the winter of 1996, you missed the biggest weather-related disaster in Lake Oswego's history. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw a boat house from a home along the canal floating down the middle of Oswego Lake. The dam on the Tualatin River had been breached and the lake returned to its original course as an arm of the Tualatin River. Water flowed into Lakewood Bay, over State street and down Foothills to the Willamette and turned the dam at Oswego Creek into a waterfall.
A new dam supposedly removed the flood risk, so the Corps of Engineers re-mapped properties along the lake and canal so they are no longer designated as in a FEMA flood zone. Are they right? See the MetroMap for FEMA flood zones.
Read about the flood here: National Weather Service
For information on other significant flood events in the US, use this map.
And for local (and national) real-time river level gauges, see the River Level Tracker. The map and chart below are from this link. For most of Lake Oswego, select Willamette River below falls at Oregon City. Others might like to track the Tualatin River, downtown Portland, or any place you are curious about.
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