Chaos Ranch
Well-Known Member
I know this weekend has been one of the most chaotic weather weekends this nation has had in awhile. Flooding in one place, freezing in another, way too warm in another....we've been turned upside down!
Since Friday we have had 4" of rain, it's STILL raining now, and will continnue to rain until tomorrow...then start back up again Friday! It's falling fast to.. not that pretty misty drizzle..nope... it's cold, hard hitting rain.
I live on a small river called the Cache river. North of me it's big. Here it's 4-6 feet deep with decent rain, but has gone nearly dry in the summer. The banks are about 20-25' high. The river is my property line and my pasture fences run about 15 feet from it's levee banks. I have a slough... swamp thingey...a small over-flow run off that covers my back pasture every time the river gets too high, but not a big deal. Amazingly, my horses LOVE to play in the 5-6" pond it forms back there! lol...
Ok, so anyways. Yesterday morning we were around 37 and it was raining.
: Yesterday evening it jumped up to 57 and it was still raining.
:
I'm not sure if any of you recall or not, but I have a passion for weather photography. (other photography too, but weather pictures are my best work.) II posted some tornado pictures I took a couple of years ago of two tornados that went by my house. (I can repost them if anyone wants to see them again). So anyways..since I am an avid weather watcher and photographer I thought it to be right up my alley when the local weather guy on tv announced that they were seeking a "whole new breed" of weather watchers. They are taking applications for people who are willing to be their weather watechers that will document, photograph, film, and report the weather in their area of Region 8. So I applied! They have shown many of my photos on the news so that already gives me a bit of a foot up.
Ok...back to my story (I get side-tracked a little too easy..sorry) So... since I just sent in that application I wanted a bit more pull so when my husband told me the levee breached up by the highway I grabbed my camera and we loaded up the kids and headed up there. (less than a mile from my house... in fact, you can SEE my house from the first photo! lol.... )
I took pictures standing on the bridge, my kids were safe in the truck parked in a driveway. This first picture is looking down the river towards my house (see my tiny little white house there on the right in the back?) Normally from this vantage you can see the river bottom, and it snakes around through the bottom ,in a variance of stream widths. More like a small creek.
Then this was the other side of the bridge facing away from my house.
Five miles down the road (*about 3 miles down the river) is a road called "Wild Hog Road". This is where this particular "river" normally dries up in the summer to nothing but a dead bed. Yesterday it licked the tops of it's levee at around 15' deep! Here you would normally see a big empty ditch with fields on each side... look now...
Here's the bridge... see the water is nearly touching the bottom of the bridge.
scary thing is that the news said my little river rose another 2 feet over-night, and it was expected to peak tomorrow evening, now that's been bumped to Wednesday evening. I'm not sure how much more water this lil' river can handle in my area....for the first time in two years and several storms I'm actually getting a bit worried for my home and my horses. We've been under flash flood warnings and watches. Then to top it all off and make it just miserable is now the temp is dropping BIG TIME, and we're supposed to be down to 17 by tonight!
What in the world am I going to do? Water is all over the place, my house is safe...for now... I don't really think the water will flood my home because it never has gotten closer than a few hundred yards from my house. Too many other places for it to go.... but it's SO wet out there, and now it's all going to freeze.
I had to send my poor kids down in the dark, flooded driveway, at 6:50 this morning in the cold cold rain to wait on the bus. My truck won't work so I coudln't take them down there... I felt so horrible that I stood in my doorway 5 minutes after sending them out and yelled my head off for them to come back but they couldn't hear me through the distance and the rain. I am a terrible mother. :no: I didn't realize the temp had dropped or that it was that flooded out there... now that it has lightened up enough that I can see I feel like the cruelest mom around. I should have just kept them home today but not knowing what the river was going to do and having no way out if it got too high I was afraid to keep there here with me not having a way to get them to safety if something happened.
Ok..I am really really sorry this is so long... but this weather has got me irked, and I'm getting a bit nervous, and I'm upset with myself for letting the kids go to school the way they did this morning.
Since Friday we have had 4" of rain, it's STILL raining now, and will continnue to rain until tomorrow...then start back up again Friday! It's falling fast to.. not that pretty misty drizzle..nope... it's cold, hard hitting rain.
I live on a small river called the Cache river. North of me it's big. Here it's 4-6 feet deep with decent rain, but has gone nearly dry in the summer. The banks are about 20-25' high. The river is my property line and my pasture fences run about 15 feet from it's levee banks. I have a slough... swamp thingey...a small over-flow run off that covers my back pasture every time the river gets too high, but not a big deal. Amazingly, my horses LOVE to play in the 5-6" pond it forms back there! lol...
Ok, so anyways. Yesterday morning we were around 37 and it was raining.
I'm not sure if any of you recall or not, but I have a passion for weather photography. (other photography too, but weather pictures are my best work.) II posted some tornado pictures I took a couple of years ago of two tornados that went by my house. (I can repost them if anyone wants to see them again). So anyways..since I am an avid weather watcher and photographer I thought it to be right up my alley when the local weather guy on tv announced that they were seeking a "whole new breed" of weather watchers. They are taking applications for people who are willing to be their weather watechers that will document, photograph, film, and report the weather in their area of Region 8. So I applied! They have shown many of my photos on the news so that already gives me a bit of a foot up.
Ok...back to my story (I get side-tracked a little too easy..sorry) So... since I just sent in that application I wanted a bit more pull so when my husband told me the levee breached up by the highway I grabbed my camera and we loaded up the kids and headed up there. (less than a mile from my house... in fact, you can SEE my house from the first photo! lol.... )
I took pictures standing on the bridge, my kids were safe in the truck parked in a driveway. This first picture is looking down the river towards my house (see my tiny little white house there on the right in the back?) Normally from this vantage you can see the river bottom, and it snakes around through the bottom ,in a variance of stream widths. More like a small creek.
Then this was the other side of the bridge facing away from my house.
Five miles down the road (*about 3 miles down the river) is a road called "Wild Hog Road". This is where this particular "river" normally dries up in the summer to nothing but a dead bed. Yesterday it licked the tops of it's levee at around 15' deep! Here you would normally see a big empty ditch with fields on each side... look now...
Here's the bridge... see the water is nearly touching the bottom of the bridge.
scary thing is that the news said my little river rose another 2 feet over-night, and it was expected to peak tomorrow evening, now that's been bumped to Wednesday evening. I'm not sure how much more water this lil' river can handle in my area....for the first time in two years and several storms I'm actually getting a bit worried for my home and my horses. We've been under flash flood warnings and watches. Then to top it all off and make it just miserable is now the temp is dropping BIG TIME, and we're supposed to be down to 17 by tonight!
What in the world am I going to do? Water is all over the place, my house is safe...for now... I don't really think the water will flood my home because it never has gotten closer than a few hundred yards from my house. Too many other places for it to go.... but it's SO wet out there, and now it's all going to freeze.
I had to send my poor kids down in the dark, flooded driveway, at 6:50 this morning in the cold cold rain to wait on the bus. My truck won't work so I coudln't take them down there... I felt so horrible that I stood in my doorway 5 minutes after sending them out and yelled my head off for them to come back but they couldn't hear me through the distance and the rain. I am a terrible mother. :no: I didn't realize the temp had dropped or that it was that flooded out there... now that it has lightened up enough that I can see I feel like the cruelest mom around. I should have just kept them home today but not knowing what the river was going to do and having no way out if it got too high I was afraid to keep there here with me not having a way to get them to safety if something happened.
Ok..I am really really sorry this is so long... but this weather has got me irked, and I'm getting a bit nervous, and I'm upset with myself for letting the kids go to school the way they did this morning.
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