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Show I CLOUDBURSTS IN THE WEST. Writing in a coasl paper on eloiiilbiirsts. a , i mecr of this region $ays . An example of the cyclopesn roek-tabviug power of a cloudburst may be drawn from no farther away than P'resno county. Dougherty creek drains ;i barren granite basin near the creal of the Sierra, tumbling down headlong porge to the middle fork of Kiiirs river n' the Simpson meadow Though it il a slender stream, its swiftness carries car-ries many stones and bouldsrt t' the Middle Fork canyon, which are dropped when the creek arrives at the comparatively compara-tively level valley floor In the eourse of centuries these had built ii) iin . vt' iisiw fan-shap-d delta from the mouth of the Dougherty gorge td the river a delta some thirty or forty feet high. 200 yards wide, and a quarter of a mile Imujt. iu .! proved by the growth of great pin en and cedara thru itqojd ;dl over it Thus it was until 1910. On B summer day in that year 8 thunderatorm fell On the upper Dougherty baain. The watera slid from the bare granite slopes and in the twinkling of an eye. as though a lake had been dumped in the '-reek, a mighty flood laden with tree trunks ami boulders fell oul of the Dougherty gorge on to the floor of the Middle Fork canyon The delta, with tin' - forest that grew on it. vanished in a moment, plowed up and swept down t lie river, and when, a few minutea later, the i reek had fallen to its normal level, it reached the river through a broad trough in the canyon floor a flare of white granite on which a quarter of an hour before had rested thousands, perhaps millions, of tons of rOck and earth There were witnesses to this flood who testified that boulders boul-ders as large as cottages were tossed alone by it like chips. That puck, an occurrence had not happened there before for eenturics was patent from the size of the trees that covered the boulder com- Probably it will nol come again for centuries cen-turies more, in which Dougherty creek ma build Up another an-other high delta across the valley floor But in the deserts of the sunt Invest . w here it seldom rains hut it pours, such happenings are common and no plaee in the tYaek of an sr-royo sr-royo is safe, no matter how parched and hopeless of moisture mois-ture the country may look That cloudbursts d ur in tiiese drj canyons of the west, and that they form and v;isi awaj everything before them in .mi iueredibly short time should be known to all eastern automobile travelers who are touring this pari of the country. The tourists should be warned a gains I camping in the bottom of a canyon on the hed of a wash in tin months 1 Jul and August We have seen ji cloudbursl occur almost without Warning and carrj aw jj part of a niiue. |