Most of the rain that falls on the mountain is absorbed into the rocks and soil. When the water pressure builds up underground you get an
So would a fair hypothesis be that the majority of these mountain streams are from the weight of the mountains pushing down on aquifers which relieve their pressure through fractured bedrock high up in the mountains?
Yes
Don’t confuse artesian springs with seepage springs. The water coming out of the side of a mountain at high elevation isn’t being pushed up from thousands of feet below. Seepage springs are caused by the rock and soil of the mountain absorbing precipitation (rain and snow) which forms a water table at that elevation, and the spring is where the water finds its way out.
Have you ever crunched the numbers before, though? Napkin math tells me that if it rained exactly 1” of precipitation over a square mile, that would be enough water to fill 2.19 Olympic swimming pools. A semi small mountain stream that moves 24 cubic inches of water at 3 miles an hour will drain those two swimming pools of water in just 73 hours. We get around 50 inches of rain a year give or take around here. Unless my math is just way off, which is highly likely, it just doesn’t seem like a logical conclusion that the source for these two streams are just seepage springs.
My childhood neighbors had a spring in their back yard it ruined** their pool two times. I remember sitting staring out my window down into their backyard watching the workers tear it down when they finally quit trying to make it work
Yes. Also simple gravity. Think of the top of the mountain as being a bowl of water with a small hole in the side. If the water level is above the hole, gravity and water pressure push water out of the hole. I have one on my property and the water being filtered through the mountain is the best I have ever had.
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