Wanted: Sunny Skies - Or A Boat!

We've had SO much rain lately.  Good, hard, drenching rains.  Every day.  Sometimes multiple times per day. We're on a slight hill and when it rains, it washes downhill in rivulets.  The ground is so saturated and the rains have been so hard, the water is streaming downhill in sheets.

Saturated, flooded ground

Remember how last winter's 4 foot dump of snow wrecked havoc with our road?  And how we got a nice big load of chunky gravel laid down a couple months ago?  BOY AM I GLAD WE DID!  Our road would be just as bad now as it was when the snow started to melt.  Right now, when it rains, it turns into a bit of a river.

Here's where the two "rivers" meet - the one that streams down our Driveway Road meeting and joining up with the one streaming down Our Road.

WHAT'S THAT NOISE?

I started home from town around 4 pm Thursday afternoon.  I could see a huge storm right over top of our area.  I could see we were getting dumped on...black skies, sheets of rain, bolts of lightening.  I turned around and stayed in town awhile longer, getting some dinner before braving my way toward home.  When I drove our country roads toward home, I encountered racing and flooding ditches and some nasty new potholes.  Our Road had some mighty big puddles.  When I got in the house and opened up some of the windows, I heard what sounded like the wind.  But the trees weren't moving.  There was no wind.  What's that sound?  It sounds like... like... rushing water!  I couldn't figure out where it was coming from.  Maybe the elk trail coming down from the forest? I hadn't noticed any running water from that area when driving in.

It took me till the next night to figure it out.  And it was a total DUH moment.  I had the windows open on the OTHER side of the house that next night and so the sound was coming from the opposite direction as I THOUGHT it was coming from the night before.  Duh-huh, oh yeh...we have that dry wash running between our property and our neighbor's on the far side of us.  It must be running. 

I didn't hear it the next morning.  But then we got about an hour's worth of a hard rain, and there it was again.  Rushing water heard from my very own window!  After the rain dwindled down to a sprinkle, I ventured out with camera in hand (and under tee-shirt tail) to check out our "river".  The ground over most of our property was so saturated it was like walking across a shallow creek.  I carefully chose my footing on rocks and tussocks, tufts and downed branches, trying not to get my feet too wet or sink into our lovely clay-mud.   Here's one of my first glimpses of the wild beast of our little creek.

As I drew closer I saw more of it.

Then, I saw it in its full glory!  (Looking upstream.)

That is some serious running water when you consider it's normally completely dry.  Grass and plants grow in it as if it had never seen a flow of water. 

Ditch, meet Water!

(Looking downstream)

Upstream again...

Downstream again

Upstream...(sorry to keep making you turn your head upstream, downstream, up and down and back!)

[Below] Here's a spot where the water seems to be overflowing its "banks".  It's a spot where there really isn't much of a "bank" and the edge of the creek water seems to merge into the flooded ground all around it on that side.  My walk to the creek was over ground just like that mucky flooded section.

I took this one from the road looking back uphill and upstream.

And here's where the culvert spills out into the pasture across the road.  I met my neighbor out there on the road.  She was shovelling and diverting the run-off along her road when we saw each other.  We walked toward each other and met at the culvert where she was able to rake out a bunch of debris that was clogging the flow.  The overflow receded when she cleaned it out...just in the nick of time as it was very close to flooding over in full measure as opposed to along the little trench it already created.

The run-off hitting the road in this photo is simply from the land, not from the creek.  The slight grade to our land sends everything sheeting downhill where it finds a select spot to run into the road.  And down the road.

I think it's funny how the water switches sides on the road. When I walked it, I saw the switch...a spot where the grade of the road changes and the water sneaks across through the gravel hump in the middle.  I could see it flowing underneath the large cinders but it wasn't strong enough to flow over top.

It was pretty deep

Today, coming home from church and errands in town, I noticed that some of the small puddles were drying out.  I don't think we got rain today...or not much anyway.  Whew! 

Oh...another thing.  All this water means....guess what...it's coming in the basement again!  Been hand-pumping, Shop Vac-ing, and squeegee-ing multiple times per day for the last two days.  It came on with a bang and I think I'm in for it for several weeks.