Rainy days

Woke up this morning to a gentle rain.  Carol started a fire in the fireplace.  The cat has been stomping around the house, eyeing the rain soaked outdoors with an air of disgruntlement.  Twice he stood at the open door, stuck his head out an inch or so, fluffed up his tail and backed inside.  He looks up at us as if to say, "fix it, I want to go outside."  Disgusted, he curls up in the chair and is

sound asleep in a minute... wish I could fall asleep so easily.  Carol is sitting on the couch, cradling a coffee cup in both hands and reading a book on her I-pad.

I too am sitting on the couch, drinking coffee, listening to the rain, and watching the rain through the window.  I thought I would catch up on some writing, as I noticed that I hadn't written anything to my blog since April, so I thought that a rainy day would be perfect to remedy that situation.

We have had a lot of rain this summer and everything is still green, an emerald green ... it is certainly beautiful and also wonderful that we haven't had but one or two small forest fires, a couple of acres or less, this summer.  Typically, our green grass turns brown by the end of June.  The Black Hills are special this year and this week the leaves are changing color.

We had about half an inch in the rain gage by 8:00 am.  This year we are on path to be the wettest year on record, in second place now, only an inch or so behind the record and still 3 months to go this year. We may set a new record today, it is forecast to rain all day.  I think with our August deluge of 6.5 inches here at our house, that we have surpassed the record.

The deluge came over a period of two hours on a Friday afternoon (1 to 3 pm).  Carol and I watched the weather radar and the thunderstorm just kept reforming directly above us.  And it rained buckets.  There was not a breeze and the rain fell straight to the ground.  It was really quite fascinating to watch.   At 3 pm it was done and the sky cleared up and the rain quit.

Our neighbor Mark R. called to tell us that we were trapped, the roads from our house, we are on a loop, were underwater on both ends.

Carol and I got on the 4 wheeler and drove down the road to the west and the water was flowing swiftly over the road.  We were amazed with the amount of water flowing over the road.  It took a week for someone up creek to claim the two kayaks.

Then we drove up past the house and down the other side of the loop.  There is a confluence of swales here, one, the creek from the right, and unexpectantly, one on the left.  The water was a foot deep, 75 feet wide and flowing at 20 miles an hour.  The power of Mother Nature is remarkable.

My dear friend Tim Berreth and his lovely wife Jacki arrived that same day.  They had driven out to our house, a during a brief lull in the storm, at least close to it anyway and had to turn back.  They were stopped by the water over our loop.  So they turned back to Custer.  After they turned back the culvert washed out behind them. Lucky day.  This is the confluence of the Upper French Creek, and there was a lot of water flowing from that direction.

There were two aluminum canoes wrapped around trees.  We looked at them for several minutes before we figured out that they we canoes.

We were forced to use a mimimun maintenance road, think logging road, out of the development.  That road too had significant water damage but was passable.  The County got permission from the Forestry Service to blade the road, the first time in over 5 years.

Tim and I were in the same study group at University.  We spent a lot of time SCUBA diving in the Minnesota area lakes and drinking beer. I don't see him often but he is one of those friends that pick up the conversation where we left off, like it was just yesterday.

3 weeks later and the road to Custer has been repaired and the culvert replaced with a new one.  6 weeks later and the damage to the Forest Service road has also been repaired.