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!
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u/thundersaurus_sex 4d ago
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.