Texas flooding, who here is affected?
 

Texas flooding, who here is affected?

Me, slightly - the lakes are up too high to go boating - the ramps are closed. Other than that, I'm tired of dreary skies, but not too adversely affected.

I grew up in the Ohio Valley - my home county, Hardin, abuts the river. I spent 14 years in St Louis including the summer of 1993 when we were on the network news 59 straight days with flooding. In short, I have a keen eye for bottom land and thus made sure my home here in North Texas is well above the creeks :)

I must say, we've gone from a 7-8 year drought and very low lake levels to flooding in less than a year. I keep waiting to see what's gonna happen over in Coppell and Carrollton if Hutton Creek comes up any higher. I worked in that area for years, and every time I drove out Beltline Road thru bottomland, I'd always think, "This place is a flood waiting to happen."

If the rain keeps up, we'll soon start to see some real flooding.

Doug

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Kody (Intruder) could be, but he's with me in TN......getting married! :eek:

Congratulations!

A year or two ago one of my publishers lost his house (Austin) to flooding. Woke up to find water swirling around his bed. Had to be literally evacuated by boat.

Scary stuff.

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Many parts of the country would love any excess water you have down there. Ship it freight collect to any post office central California.

3 months ago, we were loving it, too :)

Now, not so much :(

Doug

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Just about everybody is effected in one way or another. I have emptied over twelve inches from my rain gauge since May 1 and the NWS is calling for 2-4" more rain this weekend. The wheat fields are two feet tall and turning gold but it'll take a couple of weeks with zero rain before it can be harvested. Can't get any calves delivered because my cattleman can't get his truck/trailer into the pasture.

But I count myself as lucky. A lot of people have had tornadoes rip their homes to shreds and whatever is left washed away.

Well believe it or not, I am affected up here in Cleveland, Ohio. :eek:

<shameless plug time>
The company I work for, Exacta Drafting America, drafts the surveys for our partner companies. The one I deal with the most is Exacta, Texas. My main job is supposed to be reading land title commitments and figuring out how certain items affect your land (including

So I guess Lake Austin is becoming a lake again and not a creek?

Anyways, because of the excess rain, our field crews in that area are a little behind.

Good luck guys

We haven't had any flooding but we've certainly been wet... raining several days every week so it seems. We're currently at about 132.9% above normal for our ten year average rainfall here on our farm, according to FarmLogs... we're currently at 29.47 inches... our normal yearly rainfall is about 44-46 inches... we should currently be at about 12 inches or so for the year for our ten year average.

At Shiner, we're currently at 23.86 inches for the year, which is 105.4% above normal. We should currently be at about 12 inches and end up with about 35 inches for the year. Course, it's been rather dry at Shiner (not bad but not good either) and the sandy soil cannot hold water as well as the clay here, and the subsoil down below about 3 feet was powder dry-- NEVER a good sign! The farm ponds are brimming full and that's good to see... they usually leak down over time through the sandy soil and stabilize around three feet deep-- running about 5.5 right now-- at the level of the overflows, which is brimming full.

SO, basically, we're more than twice as wet as we should be for this time of year... Like Doug, we placed our house well above the high water mark of the biggest flood on the place... then I rented a dirt scraper and shaved down the pile of spill the county dug out of the drainage ditch on the far end of the farm, so that the farm will drain better to the ditch without having to cut drains every so often. The dirt I hauled up to where we would put the house, and built up a pad about 2-3 feet high, and the house is blocked up another couple feet, so basically this whole part of the flatlands would have to be neck deep in water before it'd be lapping at my doorstep... in which case everybody in 10 miles would have water a couple feet deep in their houses, more or less...

Anyway, the worst things so far from it is 1) the mosquitoes, and 2) the field is too wet to support vehicles, so no launches are possible currently...

I'm not going to gripe about either, actually... Like someone recently said on a farm forum I visit, "dust doesn't grow much..." This is true. Cattle have "four wheel drive" and can handle it pretty well... they're fat and slick and seem to be really enjoying it. Feel sorry for the crop guys though, trying to get planted in all this, but most of the crops that are going in are well in by now, and they'll probably get paid if they had "prevented planting" insurance, and given crop prices across the board, that's probably the surest money they can make this year... the crops that are growing are doing very well, at least around here... corn is starting to tassel and milo (sorghum) isn't too far from boot stage in most places, though there's some late planted stuff that's only about a foot or two tall yet. Cotton is looking pretty good, what little there is of it. Worst I've heard so far is that some guys had some rice DROWN OUT... Yeah, that's right-- it drowned out. Rice is, of course, grown on flat-planted ground (most of our crops here are planted on "beds" or rows of soil ("ridges" as they're called in some parts of the country) thrown up by tillage tools in the early spring or fall/winter... this keeps them up out of the water (for the most part) to keep them from drowning out in prolonged heavy rains and standing water. Rice is usually seeded with a grain drill or by air, and sometimes the field is flooded in dry weather just enough to bring it up, then the fields are allowed to dry out and the rice grows like grass until it's flooded again later, when it's time to make grain. Apparently, rice will drown out if it's flooded for a prolonged period of time before it's about 6-8 inches tall... who knew?? LOL:) Learn something new every day.

Later! OL JR :)

It's all part of the cycle of nature. Wasn't made by man either. It was that way when we got here. :)