Storm and flood!

[thistlebloom]

Wow, that is a huge amount of water! Is that your road under all that Flowerweaver?

@Smart Red , you said it's haying season? They're cutting and baling already?
They don't get it baled here until after the 4th of July (usually).

 

[Smart Red]

Some have gotten in on this dry week and have their hay down and bailed. Our renter is not one of those. Perhaps he was bailing his father's hay fields this week. If the first cutting is near the first week of May and rainfall is close to 'normal' we can get three good cuttings of hay before wet weather in fall. There have been a few years when four cuttings were possible, but that is rather rare.

 

[flowerweaver]

Yes, @thistlebloom this is the road to my house, not far from us. Our creek is coming up and it will have no place to go, so it will likely back up towards our house. By tomorrow we may be shut-in as they say around here. According to the USGS streamflow the record CFS (cubic feet per second) of water in the Frio river was 2,270 in 1935 and right now it's running at 3,280 CFS. That means the river is even much higher than in the photo and video I took this morning. Also, because it's a holiday weekend there are likely a bunch of trapped visitors, there may even be some helicopter rescues off the roofs of river cabins.

It's not just here, roads are closed due to flooding for 175 miles of the Texas hill country.

 

[baymule]

Sorry y'all are getting slammed again. We just got 1 1/4" but we're not flooding. Under flash flood watch, but we're OK. Hope the water doesn't get in the house. Be safe.

 

[flowerweaver]

Wowza! Now the river is about 12 feet above normal and running at 14,700 CFS! The 89 year average is only 122 CFS for comparison. Our own creek has cut us off from our fields and the chickens. We aren't too worried yet. It would take more than 30 inches of rain to get into our house or animal enclosures. So far this flood is smaller than the two '500 year' floods we experienced in the past.

We walked down at sunset and joined some neighbors looking at the situation. The river has tripled in width since this morning. There's sort of an informal telephone tree of folks upstream that call people downstream to let them know what's coming. We heard that the east prong of our river is 'coming down' and hasn't arrived yet so we expect more of a rise here, downstream. Because there is no working gauge upstream we have no idea how much water is coming down. There is more rain forecast.

 

[thistlebloom]

That's wild Flowerweaver. I hope you and your neighbors stay safe. We could use some of your rain up here. It's very dry and will probably be a big fire year.

 

[baymule]

@thistlebloom I wish we could send you some. Raining now, storm blew through last night, 1/2" rain. Dallas got 3" and it all flows down to the Gulf of Mexico, flooding along the way. Texas is well saturated.

Another band of yellow, orange and red on the radar is coming at us. Under flash flood watch. Raining hard now!

@flowerweaver I hope you get a break in the weather.

 

[Nyboy]

We are having one of the driest springs I can remember. be safe

 

[Chickie'sMomaInNH]

has anyone thought of filling tanks on trains and shipping some of that stuff to CA? or maybe hook up a pipeline like they do for oil!

 

[flowerweaver]

After five years in extreme and exception drought, we can't complain about the rain.

In addition to the rain we got during the day on Saturday, we got another 3.5 inches between 2 and 3 am this morning. The donkey was hypothermic in the terrible electric storm so I brought him into the living room to towel him off and get his winter blanket on. We hung out until it passed. The donkey barn will be at the top of the list of summer projects. I was up all night wondering if I was going to have to move our cars and relocate some chickens. Fortunately our creek did not top out but I went out several times with a flashlight to look. Right now the sun is shining and the river is running at 9,580 cfs. Emergency crews have been rescuing trapped visitors, there's already been one fatality reported. I don't know the circumstances, but there are always those who think they can tube or kayak a flood. As an experienced kayaker, I would not run this river above 600 cfs, maybe 800 if I were in top form. There are also people who don't know not to drive through moving water over the roads.

What is truly amazing is the number of Texas towns, roads, and even Interstates that have been closed due to record breaking flooding. We've all experienced floods in the hill country before, but never in my lifetime all at the same time!