Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Missouri Floods

We're all fine, thank you.
Soggy and a little freaked out, but fine.
The worst is over.

I knew when I bought this shack o' happiness many years ago that living right on a "seasonal creek" would be a risk sometimes. I've had plenty of time to work out bug-out plans and strategies IF it should ever really hit the fan. And I had have quite a few times to observe the flood behavior of my little area, from flash flood to just a slow rise and everything in between.
It came damn close late last night to buggin' out...or was it early morning? Kinda hard to recall when you've been going for nearly 24 hours straight. OK, I'll cop to a few 30 minute power naps in the wee hours last night, but I had been up since 5 am Tuesday, monitoring the creek level.

The older I get, the harder this crap is for me to take and my anxiety sky rockets.
I asked God to lighten up on the rain for just an hour-to let the creek drain off a bit so it could handle the next wave of deluge. At 1 am He gave us 2 hours!
First time it had ceased raining since 6 am that previous morning.
That made the difference between staying and fleeing. I firmly believe that.

Anyway...here's some pics.

This was at dusk last nite. The side creek raging into the main creek. Shot from my front yard.The big creek is just starting to spill over it's banks.

A view from my little bridge, this morning.The side creek has calmed, the big creeks levels have dropped into the banks (barely).

A shot of the 'seasonal creek' at almost full blast flood stage. It always reminds me of a river of chocolate milk when it gets like this, same color and waves of white froth. This is just less than 50 feet from my front door! You can see the debris line on the trees along the bank-that shows how much it got up last night. Road is still under water, probably trashed beyond belief. We ain't going nowhere's for awhile! No school for the younguns.

6 Comments:

Blogger Cookie..... said...

Whoa! Didn't realize you were in harms way. Glad you're all OK. I guess the old sayin "God willin and the creek don't rise" has special meanin fer y'all...Stay safe!

3/19/2008 6:51 PM  
Blogger Cookie..... said...

Well maam...I'm concerned now...haven't seen ya post anything fer quite a spell and ya haven't answered my comment. I hope that you've just been too busy and that you HAVEN'T been flooded out....

3/22/2008 5:19 PM  
Blogger Fish-2 said...

Flood waters can be scary. We rented a town house on Oak Creek in Sedona Arizona in the mid eighties. We had a balcony out over the creek but were 15 feet above normal creek level. Then in the spring it started to warm up, rain, and the snow packs up around Flagstaff began melting and flowing down the canyon. The water was rising 1½ feet per hour and we were set to evacuate when it leveled off one and a half feet beneath the balcony. The highway department measured the water speed of the creek near our place and said it was running 70 miles per hour under the bridge. We could feel the vibration of the boulders banging together in the torrent. Of course this was 3 in the morning when it finally stopped rising.

3/22/2008 7:50 PM  
Blogger white trash republican said...

I'm here Cookie.
Been busy with my other project and when the younguns are home I'm lucky to get any computer time!

Fish, I lived in the Phoenix area for a bit long ago and I know what you mean about those floods. Folks don't think deserts have those problems but it amazed me how little rain it took to cause it! Now I know why they call their dry creeks "washes'! Oy Vey!

3/23/2008 7:39 AM  
Blogger Walker said...

Lord, girl! Hope all is well.

3/24/2008 7:52 AM  
Blogger white trash republican said...

Hey Walker, long no see!
Everything's fine, the grader came thru Sat. and dozed all the debris out of the roads and scraped off the deep layers of sand, silt and gravel that had been dumped in the roads. The water has dropped to the point where we can get out of the holler via our usual route. So we're back to normal.
Funny, everyone here is saying this was worse than the flood of '93. Heck I was here then and I can't recall any flood of any consequence in that year around these parts! The spring "100 year flood" of '03 was nearly worse than this one!

Oh and in case anyone missed it-here's what's been occupying my time lately and why posting has been sparse:
http://souderstore.wordpress.com/
(sorry, i r dum when it comes to doing html links in these comments)

3/24/2008 8:24 AM  

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