The creek was running up a bit at the beginning of this weather event. When I came home from town last night at 6PM, the creek was at the top of the banks.
About 9:30PM, the spring quit. I had already switched over to the backup water supply (roof water pumped at pressure out of a 55 gallon barrel).
This morning at 7AM, the creek was over the banks and still rising. 4PM today, the rain tapered off and I went out to take some photographs.
The creek enters my property at the southeast corner, runs north for a while, turns west and exits about the middle of the western property line. There are many bends and turns in the creek, along with side channels between it and the county road. This morning, the bends were gone, the water was making a straight line out of the creek bed and across my fields. Nearly all of my lower pasture, an area of 10-12 acres was under swiftly flowing water. The neighbor's house was completely surrounded by muddy water, which was up to the second step of their front door.
I don't have a stitching program, so here's a quick Photoshop of three frames of the scene:
My driveway coming down from the house enters the photo on the right and disappears under the water at the garden. In some places, there is over a foot of fast moving water over the road. The bridge over the creek pokes up in the distance above the garden gate. At a minimum, I have lost most, if not all of the gravel on the top of the driveway. I'll be lucky if there isn't a deep washout where the worst of the water crosses. I'm also concerned about the creek bank alongside the driveway, and the approach underpinnings of the bridge. This much water causes severe erosion of the sandy soil and soft bottom land where it scrubs hard on the creek bank. Effectively, I am trapped, I wouldn't want to drive through that water unless is was a drop-dead emergency.
This photo shows only a small portion of the flooding, it extends from far upstream to the right, and all across the pasture to the left, then continuing downstream to the property line.
Just after this photo was taken, I was taking a photo looking from downstream back up to the garden area when I heard a loud "wooshing", like hard wind in the trees, or a sudden waterfall. Two vehicles driving on the county road stopped. I could hear rocks and debris moving up on the hillside above the road, and see rivulets of muddy water spilling off the roadbed and into the creek. The driver of one got out, then got back in and they both backed down the road in the direction that they had come.
I called a neighbor on the ham radio and they drove over to investigate. A landslide had occurred from the north side of my property, taking out a gouge of the hillside six feet deep and up the hill as far as could be seen. Trees, mud and large rocks completely covered the road. It sounded like a freight train coming down the hill! Even though I was on the opposite side of the creek, I considered running away!!
It only took the county about 45 minutes to show up with heavy equipment to clear it away, about an hour's work, pitching the debris over the bank and into the creek. No environmental damage there, eh?
I have concerns that this slide came from high on the hillside, which might mean that the trail up to my spring has been damaged, perhaps washed out in a section. It will be a couple of days before I can get up there to assess the damage and (hopefully) get the spring water running to the house again.
I guess the good news is that the power has stayed on and the phone still works. The rest of it will just have to be fixed up after the weather improves.
