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[DSanner106 AT aol.com]

Hey Bev,
    I see you have your first hard frost/freeze prediction  for tonight, 
seems a little early this year.
Hope you are all ready for it.
 
Drew
 
 
In a message dated 10/19/2008 12:06:30 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
erthnsky AT bellsouth.net writes:



eureka AT hctc.net wrote:
> Bev, I did not know, and I'm SO  sorry to hear that flood 
> touched your life. That must be painful to  think about, my 
> heart goes out to you.

Thanks, I'm fine.   I just wish I had been able to meet her before she 
died.  At any  rate, I see people on TV drive through floodwaters all the 
time, and it  just seems like such a dumb thing to do.  Russian  Roulette.


> 
> I used to be a whitewater instructor so I  have a very 
> healthy respect for the power of water. I approach it  with 
> great caution. I've seen the damage it can do. 

Wish you  lived closer.  We've been trying to take a ropes course for the  
canoe, not that we would be intentionally in whitewater, but you never  
know when a good thunderstorm will turn Class 1 into Class 3 or 4. One  
of the scariest moments in my life was on a river.  I was about 15,  
trout fishing on the Chattahoochee in about ankle deep water. The river  
was wide and I was on some rocks in the middle.  I heard a horn, the  
warning horn from the dam when they release the water.  Before my  
stepfather and I could get to the bank, the water had come up several  
feet and we were swept a long ways downstream.  At the spot where we  
would grab a tree, the bank was steep.  Luckily, there were some  people 
there who helped us out, or I think we could have drowned.   Fighting the 
water like that tires you out very quickly, especially when  you panic. 
Add all that with my broken arm from the river  trip a few years ago 
and well, it is a recipe for caution around moving  water.

In fact,
> that three slug flood took out the cabin I had  been 
> renting three weeks before moving into my house.

Close  call.  You are lucky.

Where I
> live there are some  crossings that always have four to six 
> inches of water flowing  across--including mine in wetter 
> years--so we have to keep aware of  the weather at all 
> times (we use wunderground.com) and always check  the 
> height of the water on the marked poles before crossing.  

I use wunderground, too.  It's the most accurate for my  area.  I like 
the poles idea...it's not something I've seen  here.

> It can be raining on the plateau but not here and still  
> flood. Unfortunately the only USGS gauge is downstream but 
>  it does give us some indication. Our local DOT is pretty 
> good about  putting barriers across the roads too and we 
> respect them.  Fortunately our canyon is not as steep as 
> those in Colorado and we  could evacuate by foot through 
> cut fence to higher ground if need be.  Even as bad as they 
> were, no lives were lost.

That's good  news.  Do you check the gauge online?  I do that with out 
local  river, just to get an idea of the flow before we canoe.
> 
> One  of the ecological problems here is that when new 
> people move in, they  clear everything, including the 
> native grasses, leaving only the ioak  trees between their 
> house and the river (there's this obsession about  having 
> to see everything, take the mystery out of it), so when it  
> rains there's nothing to slow the water down. Gravel 
> (since  we don't have much in the way of soil) from erosion 
> is starting to  fill the swimming holes and the river is 
> getting flatter and wider.  No doubt FEMA will redraw the 
> lines in the future.


That is  a problem here, too.  Our local river group, NERA, of which DH 
and I  are members, monitors the water quality.  When they clear the 
land,  runoff creates a silt laden stream.  The creeks become muddy, then  
the rivers.  When there is no clarity, fish suffer, and of course,  there 
is no way to tell  depth.

B
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