West Fork Flooding
 
After a few weeks of frequent precipitation, I think our watershed is thoroughly waterlogged.   So the past day and night of fairly steady rain has the West Fork of the Little Kanawha River rising well out of her banks and quadrupling her width.   Since we bought Hearth Hill, almost two years ago, she’s risen higher than this just once.
Here’s a sampling of my unedited footage from this morning and afternoon.   The muddy waters first splashed over her 5 foot high banks around the crack of dawn.   See how she rose several feet over the course of just several hours.  It was an impressive display of the aggregate power of all those tiny rain drops.   For some frame of reference, I’ll start with a photo showing how the river usually looks this time of year:
April 3
The grass in the foreground is about 6 feet above the water in the river. That rusted steel pipe, sticking out of the grass in the bottom center of the photo, is about 3 feet tall.
10:30am
11:30am
12:45pm - ducks surfing
April 3
Another photo for comparison. Here the grass along the river bank is about 8 feet above the water. Mostly cropped out, in the lower right, is the fire pit near the log house. 1:15pm
3:45pm
the day after - 12noon
the day after - debris
The trunk of that dead tree in the river is about a foot in diameter.
As you can see, happily, these flood waters stayed many feet below the major structures on the property.   They came closest to the old chicken coop (near the log house) and just touched the fence posts at the bottom of the (less old) former chicken run (behind the shed near the studio barn).   The waters stayed below the high grassy embankment above which the major buildings stand.   As usual, the other flooded area was the triangle of land just beyond the old chicken coop and the garage, where the river and road gradually come together, and where there is no grassy embankment.
 
* updated April 16, 6:00pm.
 
April 15, 2007 4:00 PM* - posted by Mykl