Small’s Big Moment

While an atmospheric river swept through Whatcom County weather fanatic Randy Small braved the storm to bring coverage to the community.

Story by Cameron Baird // Photos by Cicada London

March 16, 2022

It was dusk and Randy Small stood on a bridge over the Nooksack River, surveying whitewater rapids surging beneath his feet. Trees the size of telephone poles came cascading through the current, and the rain wasn’t letting up anytime soon. The river that usually flows peacefully from the glacial headwaters of the North Cascades through the Nooksack Valley and into the Bellingham Bay was now raging.

“I’m afraid I’m not going to want to see [the river] tomorrow morning,” said Small, who was live-streaming the scene for his Facebook page, Whatcom County Weather. For the past five years, Small has been covering the region’s weather for the community, but he’d never seen a storm so extreme.

Before the Nooksack flooded on Sunday, Nov. 14, 2021, another river brought water to Whatcom County: an atmospheric river.

This atmospheric river carried heavy precipitation to parts of Whatcom County and British Columbia for several days. In response to the ensuing floods, the Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office released an emergency proclamation. In it, they encouraged residents to stay home and only travel during low-traffic hours for their personal safety.

While the county bunkered down, Randy Small was suiting up to chase the storm.

“The damage is here,” Small proclaimed to his live audience the following day driving down Bender Road in Lynden — only a minute away from his house. Water from a flooded field barricaded the road in a marshy archipelago of farmland.

He was heading to Sumas, which was becoming the epicenter of the flooding in Whatcom County. To get there, Small had to navigate through rural side streets in his van to avoid the water — often being forced to turn around and reroute when it was too treacherous to cross.

When he made it to the outskirts of the flooded town, he stood next to the train tracks on Halverstick Road where a team of search and rescue workers were beginning to gather.

The rescuers, a local group of farmers and volunteers, responded to calls and dispatched boats and vehicles to save stranded residents. At one point, Small said there were at least 100 calls in the queue waiting for aid.

“We need boats!” said Small, calling upon his 36,000 Facebook followers. He had just gotten word from the fire chief to broadcast the need for boats in Sumas.

Meanwhile, a pickup truck lowered a silver skiff into the waist-high water rushing towards the submerged city in the distance. Moments later, another group of rescuers arrived in an industrial-sized tractor carrying a family to dry land.

Small worked with the team for the rest of the day and provided live weather updates for the community. But as the sun set, Sumas was still underwater.

“I finally crashed late that night, got up the next morning and did it all over again,” Small said.

The flooding damaged homes and caused landslides that blocked highways, causing an estimated $100 million in damage countywide. It was Bellingham’s wettest month on record since the Bellingham International Airport began recording precipitation levels in 1949.

“The bottom line is we’re going to be getting more water when we don’t need it and less water when we really do need it.” — Nick Bond

Three days later, the sky above Sumas was clear, sunny and blue, but the story on the ground was entirely different. Though the rain was easing, evidence of the flood’s devastation started to take hold. Houses rose above the flooded streets like islands in a sea of murky water. A train lay next to its water-eroded track like a decaying corpse.

“[The] November flood of 2021 [is] going down as a historic flood,” said Small. He toured the city perched in the bucket of an industrial-sized tractor; his feet dangled as the tractor traversed through the water.

Later, he visited the flooded home of a young couple with three daughters. Inside, mud smothered the carpet, paint peeled off the walls five feet above the floor and the family’s possessions were scattered all over the countertops to avoid getting wet. A plastic container sat in a dresser drawer in one of the daughter’s bedrooms filled to the brim with crayons and water.

About 85% of homes, businesses and structures in Sumas were damaged by the flood, according to the Washington State Department of Ecology.

Tragically, at least five people lost their lives resulting from mudslides and high water levels in Washington and British Columbia.

“If you look at the billion-dollar disasters in the Pacific Northwest, it’s flooding associated with atmospheric rivers,” said Cliff Mass, professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington.52 It’s the weather’s interaction with the Whatcom County topography that makes the area so vulnerable, according to Mass.

“When [atmospheric rivers] hit the terrain, they’re forced to rise,” he said. “As moist air rises, it dumps a lot of precipitation.”

Looking ahead, Mass said he’s most concerned about reliable forecasting and getting vulnerable populations out of the way before flooding hits. He urges the region to develop better approaches to flooding prevention and moving people away from floodplains.

Still, as climate change persists, severe flooding may pose a bigger threat.

“I hasten to add that we are seeing some changes in the nature of precipitation around here and the rest of the country,” said Nick Bond, a climatologist and researcher with the Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean and Ecosystem Studies at the University of Washington. “What occurred in November of last year is something that, unfortunately, we’re probably going to see more of — not every year, not every part of the Pacific Northwest — but those kinds of events are liable to become more prominent.”

Bond likened the effects of climate change on atmospheric rivers to the effects of climate change on hurricanes.

“We’re not necessarily expecting changes in the frequency of those events, it’s just that the strongest of them will be more intense than they tended to be in the past,” he said.

Additionally, warmer temperatures bringing more rain in the winter will reduce snowmelt that sustains the region through its dry season in the summer.

“The bottom line is we’re going to be getting more water when we don’t need it and less water when we really do need it,” Bond said.

In the Pacific Northwest, that’s a big deal — and so is a flooded river.

In many ways, the Nooksack River is essential to Whatcom County’s diverse communities. The watershed is one of the region’s key resources for farming, recreation and habitat. The river is also of major cultural significance to the Lummi Nation, Nooksack Tribe and other Coast Salish peoples.

“The Nooksack River affects everybody from upstream in the Highway 9 area [of] Mount Baker Highway, coming down to Everson, Sumas, Lynden, Ferndale, the Lummi Nation and Bellingham,” Small said.

A lifelong Whatcom County resident, Small has witnessed many changes in the region throughout the years but has always maintained an interest in covering the weather and using his passion to help his community stay better informed.

“Everybody talks about the weather,” he said. “It’s common ground for everybody.”

Randy Small went big by connecting and protecting his community in a time of chaos.

“There’s way more good than bad behind people’s motives,” Small said. “I just feel like [the flood] brought us together in a time when — granted — COVID and lots of other things have been divisive. It was sad that it took a flood to have it happen.”

Cameron Baird is a visual journalism student at Western who is interested in social and environmental justice issues.