Thursday, April 03, 2008

Lord? Are Ya there?...You can stop now.

Well, here we are on the verge of yet another flash flood down here in the holler. This will be the fifth one in about 3 weeks. Almost twice weekly we've been getting hit with torrential rain that just won't quit, dumping over 5 inches a pop in just a few hours. I blame Algore.

Luckily, maybe this one won't be so devastating. The bulk of it seems to be shifting more southward this time. The poor dumb bastards in Tennessee and Arkansas will now get a taste of what we've been dealing with since mid March. Not that I wish this misery on anyone, but hey...better them than us for a change! Personally, I'm a nervous wreck and seriously sleep deprived from anxiously trotting outside every 30 minutes or so, flashlight in hand, all night long to monitor the flood water when it does rise-hoping like hell it won't come to bug-out time.
Things have got so bad that I have taken the extreme decision to farm my kids out until this abates. The constant flooding wipes out our roads as soon as the county grader can get the debris shoved aside-sometimes as soon as 12 hours later! This has led to the younguns missing quite a bit of school since the bus can't get down here. It also adds to the anxiety level, since not only am I fretting about my property but the safety of the younguns as well. Adding to that is the fact that my car's tranny took a dump on us Monday. So, even if we had to bug out, we couldn't-not easily anyway. Fleeing on foot up to the top of Door Knob in cold pouring rain is not the most ideal option with youngsters in tow, but just as for myself- I don't have a problem with it, I just don't want to subject the kids to that.

So, off to town they went.
We packed a big duffle bag with about 4 days worth of clothes for both of them last night and off on the school bus they went this morning. They will be staying with my in-laws in town-recent empty nesters with plenty of room. They'll be safe there and can get to school without any drama and interruption.
So now it's just me and the dogs...and the chickens...and the barn cats.

The chickens and barn cats are on their own if the shit hits the fan.

Here's a few latest pics:


This is the neighboring hayfield...after the water had receded. It was a raging wide river of flood water earlier, completely under about 3 foot or higher of water. You can see where the flotsam and debris took out the fence. This was on Mar. 30th.


My road out, a few days prior. Or should that be my road IS out. Here, the hayfield was under water in this pic, but not raging like it would soon do. The only part of the road not under water was that strip there in the center of the pic!

To date we have gotten about 18 inches of rain.
This is just plain nuts.

As for flood insurance... try a preminum of about 1500 a year. Our county doesn't participate in the national flood insurance thingy. And according to FEMA, I'm in a low risk area anyway.
Yeahhhhhhhhh, riiiiiiii-iiight.
Flash floods and even flooded conditions lasting longer than 3 days are not unheard of here. But normally, we have 2 or 3 instances of that maybe 3 times a year! We've already doubled that just in a few weeks!
This is an exceptional season so far...and Spring has just begun.

1 Comments:

Blogger Lemuel Calhoon said...

Good luck to you and the kids. I have a question. Ted Turner says that global warming will cause everything to dry out. What's going on here?

4/03/2008 10:24 PM  

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