As a long time Arizona native I have never seen Roosevelt Lake this full. Its awesome.

I was a child in Gila County back in the 1970s. The drought around 1976 was so bad that we could pick up fish from evaporated parts of the local river that drained into the Gila River. But around 1979 to 1980 there was a massive flood that almost broke the main US 60 bridge. It cracked and local bus routes ended. The drought period usually ends at some point. Thanks for showing Roosevelt Lake being full again. A direct ancestor had worked on the construction of that dam in the early 1900s. I am Apache from San Carlos now doing a PhD at ASU. There was also massive flooding that tore down a bridge in Tempe around 1993.

God heard the prayers of the faithful and saw their fasts and blessed us all with the water that we badly needed and need.

Im a native of the Valley and have seen so much change its sounds like Im telling war stories to newcomers of the Valley. On 59th Ave from Olive all the way to Beardsley ( which is the 101 now) was all citrus groves. You could drive there in the middle of summer at night and get chilly. On I -17 Bell Rd was the absolute end of Phoenix. Everything North of Bell was open desert. Its been cool seeing Phoenix grow to a major city but its had to pay the price for doing so. Alot of good memories are lost forever but I have met alot of cool midwesterners along the way.

As a Californian it’s exciteing to see all the Lakes and Reservoirs Fill up Let it rain like this for many years 💯

This channel is a gem, I love Arizona! When I died I want to walk off into the desert and never be found again! Or my ashes spread what ever lol

Lived in AZ from '89 to '94 at ASU and then from '03 to '09 for a job. Yes, I walked on those "steps" at Roosevelt. I remember the Roosevelt Lake Bridge was completed in '92 and I remember driving over the dam. Had a '81 Jeep CJ5 and remember when most of the road from Tortilla flat to Roosevelt was dirt. Its nice to see that water. Hopefully the snowpack in CA also helps alleviate the usage from Lake Mead too. Loved living there.... should have stayed after the company I was working for went under...

Thanks Jessie. We'll take the grandkids down to see the river this week. I read a story about POW's housed somewhere in Tempe during WWII. With a map they planned to escape down the Salt River. Their tears were the only water found when they reached the bank of the Mighty Salt.

Rattlesnakes and fun! Shared to FB.

We’ve gotten super lucky this year with this abundance of water, hopefully with good management we can keep the taps running for a good while yet

Years ago there was so much water flowing down the Salt River only the Central Avenue and Mill Avenue bridges were open. Even the Interstate sank.

It's been crazy watching Tempe town lake fill. I work in those giant glass buildings. Good vid.

Wow! I was stationed in AZ on and off for over a decade and never saw anything like this. Though I was there in 1983 when Tucson experienced a 100 year flood that might have been re-assessed as a 150 year flood. The Pantano Wash was overflowing its banks and a friend I had on the far side of the wash a couple miles from it had water nearly up to their windows. Water was reported to have caused the bridge going over the river to be closed it was so high. So it is possible all the lakes were flooding at that time also. It was a crazy welcome to Tucson and the desert as I had only arrived a few months early to Davis Monthan AFB.

I remember the 93 rain storms. It was January and I think it rained almost every day for 21 days. I recall driving to work and having to put my head out the window because my winshield wipers quit working. I live int he White Mountains now and last summer most of our lakes were very low. They are all filled to the brim now.

Happy days for the desert!! Lucky us

Wow! Have lived here for about 15 years and now I can't joke about the rivers never having water!

I'm heading up to camp at the lake this Thursday for the weekend in the Cholla ground. I camp in the tent loop.

great to see - AZ needs

Lots of fun to view,, thanks!

The boat was located at the 101 and 202 near the Tempe Marketplace for a few months before the water release. It stayed put till they started releasing water at 33,000 CFS. The Painted Rock Dam further down the river holds more than the Salt and Verde systems combined. I was out there a few weeks ago, and it was starting to fill up, but still have a long ways to go to fill up...

Awesome! God provides water fir His people in the desert! ♥️♥️♥️

Thank you for showing Gillespie Bridge and Dam in your video!!

Great video man. I am born and raised in 21st Century AZ, sot eh drought has always been there. So this winter and all the water has been crazy to me! Really appreciate you taking the time to compile this footage and compare it to dry old 2021. Super Interesting!

Just found your channel and I like it so I subscribed. I like your stories. God bless.

i look forward to your videos,,this is where its at people just going out there gathering info for the rest of us well done jesse ,well done

That might be the boat from the movie Jaws, when Richard Dreyfuss dove underneath and the severed head popped out of the hole in the hull. 😅

Wow I didn’t expect to get to see Gillespie dam on this, really cool. You put some effort into this! Awesome video. Some historic flows we have this year, so cool!

Thanks for sharing this.

Good to see....about time....beautiful area north of Mesa / Phoneix...Superstition mountain / Apache junction....

Nice video. "back in the day" in the 80's, me and friends used to hang a rope from the steel bridge to swing over the river. We jump from the rocks there as well. We spent a bit of time by the diversion dam and lake Roosevelt too. I also remember driving across Roosevelt dam before they built the bridge. Fun to see those places again.

Love the desert. Greetings from Germany

just the fact that we went drom boat ramps miles away from the water line, to the roads leading into the park being flood, well done world

incredible. thanks for taking the time to film this! good work!

Thank You very much for this video.

So much better than local news, great reporting and historical comparisons. I remember as a young firefighter working at a station near 7 av and the river '79 or '80? watching the flood waters roaring by, it looked like the Salt was a half mile wide there. Firefighters helicoptered to the stations south of the river.

Glad to see the gillespie dam and sort of upset it hasn't been repaired to hold more water to refill aquifer.

Salt river tubing is going to be decent this year, also hoping glen canyon waters are much higher, kayaking glen canyon is my favorite trip in AZ

Ive been going there since a kid. Im sure horse pasture won't be used for awhile. great vid thank

Great video Jessie to say the least. Keep ur passion going. This video is not over edited, no stupid music and you narration is not trying to get 10 million words into a ten min video.Great work and keep it going. sincerely John

Need to follow this to the resevior downstream. Painted Rock. Yuma confluence might be interesting if it flows that far.

Well done , young man.

Thanks for the video man. Flew into sky harbor and had never seen the salt river flowing like that before.

Fantastic overview ! Thx

It's funny I found this video...I was literally thinking today how the water is still running out from Tempe town lake....Thanks for the video....

I'd love to see it again in a month with all the green and growth this should bring along! Loved this video! Thanks, mate! And how lovely to see the drought out there lifting - guess 2023 will bring good things! 😄 Lots of love from Denmark

classic snake rattle jump scare. good reflexes

Live in Tempe and every time I drive over the 143 the river is actually flowing fast wildest thing been here 3 years and this is the first time it's done that

Great video Arizona is a beautiful state. Glad to see you guys are re irrigated.

Good video and information. Thank you for your great work.

I remember 200,000 cbft per second once & before that only the Mill Ave bridge stood.

Cool footage! Great commentary.

Well done! And thanks for documenting! Capturing change over time is difficult sometimes! We have been on Saguaro Lake the past few weeks and level is awesome! Cheers, keep them coming! ~ Mark

Maybe I'm the only one, but I wonder how good the fishing is in these spots. ;)

Watching from Australia ❤❤

Great video. It was fun to see. 👍🏼

Great video! 👍

Really nice production. Thanks.

Great vid, Very informative

The 1965 floods between Christmas and New Years were a significant event also. I was up at Government Hill over the Christmas break. On the 26th it began to rain and it was pretty much steady to the 29th and that one storm put the lake to te highest level seen at that time and the waterline was the high water mark seen until the dam was raised. My grandfather had to release a huge amount of water from the spillways. That got down to the metro, where it washed out the Country Club Road bridge (SR-87) and when I saw the temporary repair it was two lanes over culverts. The replacement failed in a later flood but the current bridge in 1984 was built to take anything. In 1965 there was just that and the I-10 bridge along with the mentioned Central Avenue and Tempe Bridge. Coming back from New Years we had to go into Phoenix via Tempe Bridge and the backup began maybe Dobson or Alma School so it took quite a while to get to the bridge. The original bridge from 1902 fqiled decades later and the current one over Tempe Town Lake is the replacement.

Great footage, mate! Always a pleasure to see local geology.

Thats cool. I was out there two years ago having never been there before. And I thought it looked REAL low. Glad the wet season restored the lake...for awhile. AZ has a lot of beautiful country either way. And Jumping away from a Rattlesnake...nothing wrong with that lol

I would've been in the next county in a split second when I saw that snake. 😱

All water containment and diversion infrastructure working exactly as designed.

This year is reminding me a lot of the late Seventies and early Eighties when floods were common on Rio Salado. We saw every reservoir in Nevada & Arizona go over capacity during a five year stretch; it was awesome to behold.

I moved to Phoenix in 1986. At that time there was no water flowing down the Salt River. Mill Ave had two directions. One would cross the Mill Ave bridge going from Phoenix to Tempe. The other direction from Tempe to Phoenix would c1ross through the river bottom. I would think in Montana we have bridges that go both ways. A few years later, they started to build a new bridge. While during construction in 1992-93 they had a 500 year flood that washed out the temporary bridge and they had to start over. When you are as dry as Phoenix is, a good rain storm can be a 500 year flood.

Good video I must say

Best guess on the boat... It likely floated away from Tempe Town Lake when the lake's dam broke in 2010 and sent a torrent down the Salt River channel. Looks like it's been there about that long.

Awesome video! You are very thorough and have really good footage! I heard that rattlesnake and jumped with you lol you can never mistaken that rattle for anything else!

Crazy part on the Loop202 part the little island of bushes is actually a 25ft tall hill and it is completely under water. I remember after the mill ave damn failed there was water there but every year it would slowly would evaporate until there was only puddles left and then today we are dumping water like crazy to avoid future flooding.

Nice tour I live in Phoenix been to the dam at Horseshoe dam while it was releasing that was cool walking under the spillway. You should check out the Painted rock dam that is downstream only fills when Gila and salt rivers flow.

Great content ….. I just subscribed !

Ooooh yeah, nice finds Brent! Does this mark a whole new chapter for your project?

Looks like that Bayliner floated in from New Jersey.

Very cool, just subscribed….

I'd love to see a video like this for Saguaro Lake

Haven't seen it this plentiful since the early 90s.

Ivan remember one year that every bridge into ph. Was closed but one . On most of them the water had spread so wide under the bridge that it had wiped out the road at both ends of the bridges. The airport was flooding so we had to drive to the airport from our home in Gilbert to pick up his plane so e could park it elsewhere. It took hours to get there and hours for me to get home since all traffic since only one bridge.

Awesome video! The jokes!

Maybe 1984 or so all the bridges over the Salt River in the Phoenix area were closed or mostly washed away except the Mill Avenue bridge. Even the interstate 10 bridge was partially shut down due to subsidence of the east bound side. Traffic was diverted so that the west bound side handled both east and west traffic. The entire grater Phoenix area was a mess with the almost impossible commute to work situation. Multiple 100 year floods and 50 year floods in one season.

That Bayliner appeared to be registered in New Jersey

That Bayliner was a long way from home....it was last registered in New Jersey (hence the NJ in the registration numbers) it was possibly stolen and abandoned some place close by up stream.

Awesome. The mountains in Colorado have record levels of snow. Possible flooding this spring

Thanks for the update. Roosevelt is my normal go to lake. I live in Sedona. I was thinking about going fishing in a couple weeks but I guess I'll hold off for now.

Greetings from the BIG SKY. I used to live in Phoenix for many years.

I have seen all the AZ lakes full and we had 2 100 year floods in 81 82 I think that took out all but 2 bridges. I want so see a 1000 year flood.

Report on Painted Rock Reservoir

Nice Pictures !!! But... I would prefer it if you had longer panning shots vs. 2 second shots.

Thanks for the video. It was good to see the Salt running so well and the lake so full. I lived up on the mogollon rim several years, and fished, hiked, and explored the area a good bit. I moved away a few years ago. When I was there the area was struggling with a protracted drought, and many streams were dry or very thin. It was good to see the Salt river running so well, but is there any chance you might do similar videos of other streams in the area like Tonto creek? Maybe show flows on the salt in the canyon? Or some footage of Cherry creek? (Running through Young, AZ and into the salt.) It would be great to know that the streams coming off the rim are healthy and well watered.

I know you usually do drone stuff, but if you want to jump in a plane a video/ talk through the whole salt system let me know. I just flew it to see all this this past weekend myself. I’m based at Chandler airport.

Passando pra prestigiar aquele super Like Tmj ✌️

hello brother how u doing i just moved to az surprise

Tube the salt river is fun.

I moved here to Yuma county in 1994. I'm born and raised 22 years in Staten Island, boro of New York City. Attended public school before they went all nutty. I first went through AZ on a cross country trip on a Greyhound bus in 1990 to see my brother and meet his wife and family. He was a United States Marine stationed at MCAS EL TORO CALIFORNIA. SSGT WOJO, ED. 😢 😔 Anyways... The colours beauty the peace and quiet at times is the reason why people can live in such a rough environment. I particularly am willing to slow boil or fry on purpose to see the most beautiful sunrises and sunsets ever seen by man for the rest of my life. Here in Arizona call that adaptation.

You younger generation crack me up. That river flowed WIDE in the past, where do you think all the river rock came from? The Flow FLUCTUATES. There have been times that the salt river wiped out the bridges and overpasses. Weather is Cyclical, NOT STAGNANT. The desert has been there for BHILLION years. The reservoirs took like 15/20 years to fill when built.

Do one on Queen Valley

That abandoned boat has California registration numbers.

Sad part is all that water when we do get it goes to waste because it flows right out to the ocean through the river bottoms if they would just build dams in the river bottoms like the lake they created for Tempe town lake when we get this excess of water and during our monsoon season, we always get water flow. We could fill those lakes up And have water for the valley instead of having to take it from Lake Mead. It would solve our drought and water shortages I believe. Back in the 70s when I was in high school I’m now 63 there was a group of college students who proposed a thing called the Rio Salotto project which would’ve built small lakes along all the river bottom surrounding the valley to fill up during monsoon season to provide water for the valley. I’m not sure why they never done that.

The collapse happened in January-February of 1993. I was living in Tucson at the time, and it rained all but three days in January.

That boat was part of a 3 hour tour gone bad

This is a good thing water levels have been so bad lately down stream from this