My Favorite Natural Disaster

It's true. I have a favorite national disaster. I love hurricanes. I love big storms. And I love floods. Oh, don't get me wrong.-- I feel really bad for people who are harmed. But I can't help loving all that rain.

I think it's in my genes. When I was young we lived in Southern California. Every now and then it would rain really hard, and my parents would get in the car and drive around to look at the water. I don't remember them ever taking us--my mom was probably desperate for time away from all of her kids. But that need to go look at the flood waters was passed on and is alive and well in my heart and mind.

In the 24 hours starting right before Cindy Lynn's wedding reception Durham got 5.8 inches of rain. Yep, the drought may be over at last. So Saturday afternoon Russ & I set out with the little kids to survey the damage. Our first stop was just outside of our neighborhood--the normally invisible Little River. Seriously, driving by the only way to know there's a river there is that you're on a bridge. There is no water to be seen--only some rocks if you slow down and look closely enough. Well on Saturday this was not the case--it was very exciting!



Our next stop on this road was to look at the recent surprise additions to our community. Jason & I were driving down this road on our way to the reception the day before and I stopped the car because of the shock I was experiencing. Luckily we live in the middle of nowhere, so if you stop in the middle of the road its generally not a traffic crisis. We're still wondering how the zebras (not one, but two!) got to Bahama.

Even funnier than seeing the zebras was seeing a big truck pass by, turn around, and come back. The driver hopped out with his camera. (Yes, there were now two cars stopped in the road. It's that kind of road.) As he walked up to where I was taking my pictures he said "Now that's not something you see very often!"

Indeed.

After the zebra sighting we resumed our survey of flood waters. Just a little farther down the road there was another bridge across the Little River, and the river had taken over adjacent fields on either side. I did feel bad for the owners of this little house. It seemed very neat & tidy, and I'm sure they normally enjoy their proximity to the mild Little River.

We left Bahama and turned South into Durham, driving over several of the bridges over the Eno River. At one point we noticed a helicopter hovering high in the air to the east of us. Our hypothesis was that it was a news helicopter filming the flood at one of the Eno bridges. Sure enough, when we got to that bridge the normally tame and low Eno was completely out of it's banks and almost as high as the bridge. Little did we know it, but the highlight of our afternoon was still to come. We turned onto Snow Hill Road to begin making our way towards home, but within a mile or two saw a warning sign on the side of the road: High Water. Now this is a road that I normally think of as fairly flat. How high could it be? And the bigger question--were we willing to find out? Russ said that we should turn around and go back. On the news that morning he had heard one of the local highway patrol officers reminding people that their motto was "Turn around; Don't drown."

I pointed out (accurately, I might add) that since there was water on both sides of the road, turning around in a minivan was going to be a bit tricky. And that it couldn't be that deep. So he proceeded cautiously forward. Before we'd reached the halfway point, however, I got cold feet. By then I could see that it did get deeper, and I wasn't sure my poor minivan was going to make it. So Russ backed up slowly until we were out of the water. On the opposite side of the water a big white truck pulled up. Hooray! We were sure that the big white truck driver was going to power through the water, and then we would be able to see how deep it actually was. But no. After driving slowly forward a few feet, the big white truck driver backed up and made a complicated turn to get out of the way of the car behind. Who was behind the truck? Well...it was grandpa in his Cadillac. Really & truly. And let me tell you, grandpa wasn't going to let a little thing like a "High Water" sign and a road covered by water stop him. No sir.


He drove into the water--slow but determined.

After the first minute a wave formed in front of his car.


And then broke. And on he came. I worried for a minute that he was in too deep--that he would have water in his car. But he didn't hesitate at all.


As he drove into the shallower water Russ & the kids & I gave him a cheer. Hooray! If grandpa's low slung car could do it, then our minivan certainly could as well!



We thought the fun was over after our successful drive through the flooded road. But then we remembered one other bridge we wanted to check out. The very high bridge on Johnson Mill Rd. over Little River. The bridge is so high that we normally can't see a thing when we drive over it. That doesn't stop me from driving reallllly slow so that I can look longer. There is so little water and it's so far down that it doesn't make a difference.

When we arrived at the Johnson Mill Rd. bridge we could see that we were not the first people to have this idea. It turned out that a team from the U.S. Geological Survey were at the bridge trying to determine the surface velocity of the water. Apparently the water was too rough for their regular equipment to work, so they were using a lower-tech method. One of the men dropped a marked stick into the water on the high side of the bridge. The other man then timed to see how long it took the stick to travel to the low side of the bridge. Jenna got to be a place marker while the workers retrieved their meauring tape. (I told you it was low-tech!) They determined that the water was moving 10ft/sec. It was certainly fast and furious--and very easy to see from the bridge.

I'd have to say that our afternoon of looking at the flood waters was highly entertaining. Russ was a hero, Jenna was a marker for the US Geological Survey, and we got some great pictures before the rivers settled back down into their banks.

Thank you Mom, for teaching me to love the floods...