Here comes the RAIN !!!

[jinman]

About an hour ago, I did a drive-around on my place to look at runoff damage (sorry, no camera). My road is washed some, but very minor. The garden soaked up most of the rain and drained off just as I planned it - AMAZING! My pond I cleaned out is full and overflowing. The pond it drains into is up 3' and our big lake is about 2' down from the overflow which means it's up about 5'. This one rain has made us "water healthy." It will probably be a few days before I get back to digging postholes. I don't like to work in that sticky clay mud. Yesterday, it was too dry to dig and today it's too wet. Or maybe I'm just looking for an excuse to be lazy.

 

[Bird]

Vernon, I feel like I'm probably wasting money, but freak things like that 43" happen and that's the reason I'm paying for flood insurance. I don't really think 10" would flood my house, but it's a possibility.

 

[texbaylea]

Vernon, I feel like I'm probably wasting money, but freak things like that 43" happen and that's the reason I'm paying for flood insurance. I don't really think 10" would flood my house, but it's a possibility.

I think you are smart. I had flood insurance and all the rest but at best it covered about half our losses. In part I chose our present place because it was 40+ ft above the creek and the house is very close to the top. We could get blown off of here but we would not flood.

A house just over a mile away got a foot of water inside from the 7.5 inches we got on the 28th and they had never had problems in the previous 25 years they had been there.

Vernon

 

[Bird]

Vernon, our first house was a very small, older wood house about halfway down a long sloping street, but much higher than the drainage channel at the bottom of the hill. We never had a problem, but then one of my cousins bought the place when we bought a bigger new house nearly 4 years later. And one morning he awoke to a loud noise and found water and other sewage shooting up a foot or more out of the toilet. The city sewer had stopped up one house farther downhill from him, and it flooded his house and the next one above his to a depth throughout the house of about 4". Another freak incident. But all three of our other homes, until this one, were on the highest ground in the area.

 

[mgamber]

There is something freaky about these past couple of storms for sure. Hurricane IKE did not flood any of our property and yet the storm a week ago flooded my garage and was threatening to get into the house. I have since created some drainage channels to flow the water around both the house and garage.

Strange...

 

[texbaylea]

Vernon, our first house was a very small, older wood house about halfway down a long sloping street, but much higher than the drainage channel at the bottom of the hill. We never had a problem, but then one of my cousins bought the place when we bought a bigger new house nearly 4 years later. And one morning he awoke to a loud noise and found water and other sewage shooting up a foot or more out of the toilet. The city sewer had stopped up one house farther downhill from him, and it flooded his house and the next one above his to a depth throughout the house of about 4". Another freak incident. But all three of our other homes, until this one, were on the highest ground in the area.

You can plan all you want but Mother Nature is going to get you eventually.

Vernon

 

[weldingisfun]

I think we may nearly be over the drought. We got 5.1 inches in March and 5.0 inches in April. Didn't seem like we got that much rain at the time but the numbers don't lie.

 

[EddieWalker]

The forecast for tomorrow is now at 90% for severe thunderstorms. When they get that confident in their predictions, I actually start to believe them. I'll plan on it being a wet day and do what I can today in moving some dirt.

Eddie

 

[Bird]

Eddie, our forecast right now is for a 60% chance today and 100% tonight. And you just about see my grass growing.

 

[jinman]

Yesterday, when it finally was dry enough to get into the garden, I did a closer inspection for water damage. My drainage was not perfect as i had thought. On part of the fill soil I had some pretty severe washouts. This is in an area I raised over 4' by adding fill. The problem is that I have not had time to add rock rip-rap to the slope and water draining over the garden caused erosion. I ended up adding about 8 bucket loads of dirt to build a berm to redirect water away from this slope. I also cut a drainage ditch around the outside of the garden to keep water from flowing over the planted areas. It's all pretty messy looking, but my hope is that I'll be ready for the next round of storms and my garden won't wash away. It's always a case of extremes, too dry or too wet it seems.

I finished digging my postholes for the retainer also. I have some pictures of the digging before the rain and how dry the clay was. What I found yesterday was that the water has soaked down about 6" below the surface. After that, it's the same as before. Even so, I got all my holes drilled and posts setting in them. I'll try to get some more pictures later today, but I have posted some pictures of my "dry holes" I drilled.

 

[Bird]

So the last rains brought me 1.9" in 2 days (4/29 & 4/30), but that little front that went through this afternoon brought me another 1.9" in an hour. The first inch and a half in less than 30 minutes. At one time, the rain gutters were running over even though the water was coming out the downspouts with enough volume and force that most of it was shooting out past the splash pans. That'll be some runoff that'll raise the level in Lake Lewisville. The lake was over 4' down recently, but is showing only minus 2.7' right now and I'm sure tomorrow it'll be less than that.

 

[Bird]

Three times today, I've thought the rain was over, at least for awhile, and then another round hits. So I'm now up to an even 6" for the day, we have another lull in the action, and I'm going to bed.

 

[EddieWalker]

Bird,

Is six inches going to cause flooding? from the watching the radar, it looks like you are in for some more rain. Maybe quite a bit more!!!

We're still dry here. I was hoping to move a bunch of dirt today before the rains hit tomorrow, but I busted a rear spring on the dump truck. Now that I can't move the dirt like I wanted, I'm sure the rain won't even hit here.

The dopler has the storms staying above us and pretty much following Interstate 30 to Arkansas.

Eddie

 

[jinman]

Eddie, I was watching the weather and decided that you would miss those heavy storms last night. The radar shows you are getting a steady rain this morning.

Unfortunately, Bird caught the full cloudburst last night. 6" is bound to cause some curb-to-curb street flooding in his area. Where he lives is a low, flat area just before the drop to Lake Lewisville. It's not in the flood plain, but it is in the drain plain. I hope his area is okay now that the rains have slowed.

We had one little cloud come over yesterday afternoon and dropped 3/4 in. in about 10 minutes. That's been it for us. My trenches I cut and my dirt berm on the back of my garden did their job. I watched the rain go right where I wanted it. This makes a little over 4-1/2" total this last week for us. That's a good amount and will keep us moist for a week or two. I won't be disappointed if we don't get more rain for awhile. My stepson and his wife are coming for a visit today and then driving back up to Norman, OK tomorrow. We should have nice weather for them, and that suits me just fine.

 

[Bird]

Eddie, this has been some weird weather, but maybe not unusual. I might have gotten .03" more rain after I went to bed, but anyway the total was six to six and a tenth inches. But they show the Denton Airport at a total of 2.09". And I haven't driven around any of the area yet, but I don't see as much standing water around here as I expected. Margaret says there was some mention in the TV news last night of hail and flooding in Denton, but I don't know whether it the town or Denton or just Denton county. Every time it rains, they mention possible flooding of Denton Creek near Justin.

Anyway, it appears to all be over for us and the radar makes it appear that you're getting a little rain now.

 

[jinman]

Margaret says there was some mention in the TV news last night of hail and flooding in Denton, but I don't know whether it the town or Denton or just Denton county. Every time it rains, they mention possible flooding of Denton Creek near Justin.

Bird, all I saw on the 6 o'clock and 10 o'clock news was the same video inside the Cowboy practice field as the roof caved in and the structure collapsed. I know it's bad, but I thought they kinda replayed that video a few too many times.

 

[Bird]

Jim, I didn't watch it on TV, but read about the building collapse. I drove around and down by the lake this morning, saw one big old tree down, one other big limb off a big tree, a few places where water had run across the streets and washed some debris across, but really just nothing that amounts to anything. The lake appears full. And the primary drainage channel around here does have muddy water running at a pretty good rate, but it isn't deep enough to amount to anything.

 

[EddieWalker]

Bird,

Glad to hear there's no flooding in your area. We got hit this morning by a pretty sever thunder strom. At about 2 am, the thunder went off like a bomb and kept at it for several hours. The place was really rocking!!!!! He had some very heavy rain, hail and then just steady rain until an hour ago. I have 2.83 inches in my digital rain gauge.

Eddie

 

[jinman]

Bird, I didn't mean to imply that you were in any flooding danger, but I believe you posted some pictures once after a big downpour and water was pretty deep in your street. If you got your 6" over a long period, there's no reason to expect flooding.

I don't know how anyone watched news on the TV without seeing video of the Cowboy practice field at Valley Ranch. Just on the 10 o'clock news, I think they ran the video at least 6 or 8 times. Thank goodness more people were not hurt and I wish the best for the coach who has a broken back. They mentioned that he should not have permanent paralysis. I hope they do an in-depth investigation of that type of structure since many other teams use similar designs. If the materials get weakened after 9 years, then that needs to be determined and the other facilities checked.

 

[Bird]

Jim, I didn't watch the TV news last night myself. Margaret watched some of it, and of course our satellite signal came and went occasionally because of the rain.

I've been told by several people that this area used to flood. One neighbor said it never got high enough to get into this house, but did get into houses half a block south of us. But with the drainage ditches now, it shouldn't happen again. The flood gauge sign on S. Corinth St. is still there; about 100' from the police department.

I think you're talking about the below picture from 4/24/07 where I was standing just inside the garage, and I figured I got a total of 5.05" that day, so yesterday I got more rain, and the yard looked like a swamp for awhile, but never as much water in the yard as in 2007; maybe because the rain in 2007 came down faster.