Spent the weekend at the family Ranch in the foothills of the Sierra, north of Merced and west of Yosemite. I may have mentioned here elsewhere that the Merced River runs right through it for several miles, and that my BIL, together CalTrans and other state agencies, restored the entirety of it in that area back to it's original state, recreating ancient flood paths/plains, restoring the river bed/banks, you-name-it. It took years.
I was astounded to see how wide it was this weekend, where we had the annual family bbq.
This shot shows it more than 1/2 mile wide, where normally, even in spring conditions, it's anywhere from 30m-40m wide. No kidding. There's so much water that the river has actually changed its course in the middle of the flood plain, and won't be in the same place after the melt that it was in beforehand. I didn't have a wide enough lens, from up on a hill, no less, to get the whole thing in frame. Where it for years ran was off to the right, with the far bank in this shot having been its north bank. Now, if you look in the center of the shot, you can see where it's changed course and is making a 'S' turn, like on a racetrack, between some trees.
From this one, where it's a lot deeper, the usual size of the river is from the far bank to the white area that is now a sandbar, just below it. That used to be the south bank, where people could approach it by foot, wade, skip rocks, swim, whatever.