Weather

I was all set to write a kind of bad things-good things post about how one day Tom parked the tractor in the strangest place,

 the ditch.

Actually something broke on the front end (Tom told me what, but apparently all I heard was, blah, blah, blah, because I don't remember what he said) and it's sitting there until the parts that had to be ordered arrive. Tom gets to put it back together where it sits. Bad thing.

And then the next day,

a friend gave us these morel mushrooms that he picked. I sauteed them in butter and added garlic and lemon juice. The finest delicacy, and they grow all around here. Good thing.

But things continued before I got the post written. And it's not really bad things, more like life happening.

We got a reprieve from the cold, wet weather we've been having, at least long enough to get the cattle moved. Look, I'm actually riding in a t shirt and you can see blue sky.

Then it started raining again. It poured for days and the already saturated ground couldn't hold any more water.



When we got home yesterday afternoon, this is what we saw.

 There was no way the culvert under the county road could keep up.

The normally dry creek bed near our house.

The irrigation ditch overflowed, and the water hadn't even been turned on yet.

The water flowed over the driveway as that culvert couldn't handle all the water either.

Remember our poor broke-down tractor?

This is what it looked like yesterday evening. Good thing Tom ordered front wheel bearings to replace the old ones while he had it apart, 'cause I think they might really need it now and it might be a while before it's repaired.

I posted pictures of the flash flood we had a year ago. Compare the pictures here. That flood lasted only a few hours. With all the rain, this one has been building.

Our basement had close to a foot of water in it yesterday. We have one pump down there running full time and another one set at intervals to keep up. 

Today, since it hasn't rained, the water pouring out of every drainage has slowed a little, but it's still  coming in the basement just as fast.

We've had record rainfall in this area. There is extensive flooding east of here with road closures, people stranded from their homes and irrigation systems wiped out. It could get a lot worse when it warms up because the above average snow pack in the mountains hasn't really begun melting yet.

And there's another big storm on the way. Yep, life is definitely happening.

I was rereading some of my older posts and realized that I write about the weather a lot, but, as you can tell, it's a big part of our life here.