Big Tujunga Wash at Foothill Blvd - Sunland area

Big Tujunga Wash - a "braided river"


View looking up the braided river bed - North and East toward the San Gabriel Mountains.

Bridge crossing Foothill Blvd facing toward Sunland - is in the midst of
construction / destruction.

South side of the bridge has been torn up.

Graffiti under the bridge, where the face anticipates the destruction of this
beautiful bridge or something else.

Jan 26, 2008: Storm water runs off of the San Gabriel Mountains through the Big Tujunga Wash (shown here) to the Hansen Dam and then eventually to the Los Angeles River. This "wash" is a braided river on an alluvial fan. It is called a "wash" because it has very low water flow except in the rainy season November - March so it is not considered a "river" because of its lack of flow in the dry part of the year.

Tujunga Dam and Reservoir

Top Image - Tujunga Dam on Jan 27th 2008 - viewed from the east.

Bottom Image - Tujunga Dam circa 2005 - at capacity with water releasing.
View from the south west. I would love to find the place that this picture is taken from.
Could it be a helicopter ?

On Big Tujunga Canyon Road police blocked the road to casual drivers on Sunday ( Jan 27th) during the storm. Obsessed in pursuit of my hydrology project, I was able to convince the officer to give me an hour to take pictures up stream. There were only minor debris flows on the road and a good water volume in the Tujunga "river" aka Tujunga Wash, behind the Tujunga Dam and in the Reservoir. The dam is in the midst of a seismic retrofit that just started in 2007. So its master does not want it to fill fully: the County Water Master released water during the storm before it could fill more than 75 %. The top image and compares to the Dam at full capacity in an image from 2005 that I snagged from the Mountain Conservancy at: http://www.mrca.ca.gov/pdf/attachment930_Attachment%201.pdf

Los Angeles River & Tujunga Wash