it is the first river to flood during any major rain event. It set an all-time record-high flood level on December 3, 2007 when an intense tropical rainstorm moved in following several inches of snow from the day prior. Its maximum discharge of per second, recorded on December 3, 2007, was more than twenty times its mean flow, and bested its previous record set on November 5, 1934 at more than per second. The floods completely ripped up Highway 101 through the Skokomish Valley, resulting in two-day closure while emergency repairs were made. The 2007 flood event prompted Mason County officials and the Washington Department of Transportation in conjunction with the Skokomish Tribe, to design and construct a newer, elevated roadway structure over the area of Purdy Creek, which is the lowest point in elevation in the valley that Highway 101 crosses. After 16 months of planning and construction, a 350-foot bridge elevated 12 feet higher than the original roadway was opened in July, 2009. One notable flood in 1996 closed U.S. Route 101 and State Route 106 for four days, stranding a KOMO TV news crew from Seattle. Typically, these floods on the Skokomish spawn scores of Seattle TV news crews and print journalists to the scene, and is not unheard of for stories of Skokomish River floods by the media to include the joke "Why did the salmon cross the road?" The combination of increased sediment load due to extensive clearcut logging, the reduced sediment carrying capacity due to the damming of the North Fork, and winter-weather rain patterns are suspected to be the primary reasons for the flooding that occurs almost every year on the South Fork. In late fall through early spring, storms often come from the southwest. These usually drop the most rain in the vicinity of the Skokomish River due to the topography of the Olympic Peninsula. Notably, the Skokomish Tribe, through the restoration of the Skokomish delta, (The Nallies Project), removed dikes surrounding Nallies Island, relieving some of the flooding in the valley. Recently on the second highest flood event recorded after the restoration, the flooding was only minor, compared with what it would have been before, moderate to severe flooding. Additionally, it is suspected that tectonic uplift of the land around the lower Skokomish River may be contributing to flooding by decreasing the gradient of the river channel, even prior to any