It almost never rains here in the summer. When it does rain in the winter, we usually get a lot of it all at once. Everything that grows needs the water, so that’s good, but heavy rain also can cause moderate to severe damage to driveways and roads. Mudslides in the mountains can wreck both modern freeways and primitive backwoods roads.
My driveway has number of these culverts made from a pressure treated lumber – a 2×6 on the bottom and two 2x4s on the sides:
This is not a bad design, it keeps the leaves from clogging the pipe, and water will continue to flow even when there are plenty of leaves in the basin:
Unfortunately in a heavy rain the runoff of road base, sand and gravel overwhelms the grate. Then the water just flows over the whole mess to wreek havoc down the driveway, causing deep ruts:
The good part about heavy rain is that the Sierras get heavy snow! Then we get to forget about maintenance headaches at home and enjoy the skiing.
Lake Tahoe as seen from the top of the Upper Ramsey’s trail on Mt Rose:
Looking down to the valley south of Reno from the “Slide side”:
