A “small” creek floods during Helene
I know I said earlier that I would try to blog more often. Well, I did, but … you know, life happens. I had developed several blog ideas before last summer ended. I had written partial drafts of some of them. I’ll begin trying to catch up now.
But 2024 was already a difficult year anyway, I thought, for trying to grow a veggie garden, with weeks of alternating drought and swamp periods, plus the large invading weeds.
But then NATURE STRUCK. BIG TIME!
Something called Helene came through our area on September 27, 2024.
Technically, they called this a tropical storm. But we used to live in Houston and experienced several hurricanes. It sure seemed like the winds and rain here were as strong and long-lasting as some of the storms there.
I could provide all the gory details, but when I wrote that up, it ran multiple pages – too long for a blog, and probably not that interesting for most people. What follows is a brief summary.
We were so much more fortunate than the many who died, lost homes and/or businesses, and had bridges and/or roads to their homes washed out.
We had to get a new roof. We got some water inside an attic and the living room of our house, but no major damage except for the roof. Six trees were blown or washed down and one of them took part of our fence. Having to take care of other work in the meantime, I’m still cleaning up tree debris.
A creek down a hill from us pre-storm was about 4 feet wide and 3 feet deep. Now it’s 5-8 feet wide, depending on the location and over a foot deeper. At one point during the storm it was a fast-moving river generally about 30-40 feet wide, wider in places, as you can see from the photo.
We had no electricity from the grid for a week. Our generator gave us electricity to power some of the kitchen and master bath and bedroom. We ran a long extension cord inside from a working wall circuit to areas which didn’t have power. We have a gas stovetop and didn’t lose gas pressure, so we were able to cook on it. We maintained water pressure. No HVAC, no laundry, no oven during that time. No internet, no phone, no cable for almost a month. Our only communication with the outside world, if you want to call it that, was one-way from a battery-powered FM radio.
And we can’t forget the voracious mosquitoes that resulted.
Some of our neighbors had downed tree or other problems.
It still looks like a disaster area around here in places. So many trees down. Roads patched, with the patches now needing patches. North Carolina did a remarkable job, though, in clearing, cleaning up, and repairing roads.
It took almost 6 months to get I40 open again. Over 6 months to rebuild and open the 2-lane road which ran beside one of the major flooding rivers through town. Over 9 months to get a popular mountain park open. The branch of our local bank is still operating out of a temporary facility because mud from a slide filled their building. Many businesses have not re-opened, and some probably won’t.
And now they have a similar situation in Texas.
WAS IT REALLY NATURE?