gully washer

May 10, 2012- 

Gully Washer: a torrential rain that causes ditches to overflow creating flash floods in creeks, rivers and roadways.  

We haven't had one like this since 2007.  At least that's what we can remember.  The road on our property washed out 3 times that year.  We reinforced it as best we could but have not had this big of a flash flood to test it since then.  The downpour came after a few days of nice slower soaking rain.  Then it just opened up.  Casey says we got more rain in 3 days than we did all of last year.  On this day it was over 5 inches.  I think the total according to his weather station was 7.5 inches.  But the rain was coming so hard and fast for so long Casey is not sure it could accurately keep up.  

After the rain subsided we could hear the rushing of water down in the creek.  I'm not sure how many thousand acres drain into this creek before it gets to us but any time we get this much rain we know we may be stranded.  

Casey checked and the water was up about 3 feet over the road.  After supper he loaded us up to check again to see if we'd be able to get across in the morning.  

This is what we had a few hours after the rain ended.  This is only about a foot over the road.  

This is the same view, just a little to the left where the water was flowing over the road, eroding away on the other side and back into the creek.  We have two fairly large culverts running under the road but there was so much water it was flowing through those and up and over the road.  The water gap in the creek dividing our property from the neighbors washed out.

Casey testing out the road to see what was left.

This view is standing in the roadway looking back into the creek and the direction from which all the water was flowing.  I assure you the water was not this calm when the bulk of it first came our way.

 Widow Maker was drenched.  Nice and slick.  She needed a bath anyway.

She looked so ragged and was ready for the rain to stop.

Even with all of that we are so thankful the Lord has blessed us with this much rain.  After the drought for the last few years, especially last year we'll take all we can get.