Aleluia, the Great Flood is Over

The flood waters are finally receding from my yard. Now, I enjoyed them while they were here and got a lot of mileage out of the "We've got excellent beachfront property now!" pun, but I'm relieved to see the waters leave.

 This was the water level when I last posted. We'll call this Hour 0

This was the water level 24 hours later.

Here's our circle driveway. The water was coming up over the lower lane.

Here's the neighboring trailer. The water seeped into the concrete basement but they stayed high and dry.

Fortunately this was the height that the water got. That night, temperatures dropped to 25 degrees. I hoped the water would freeze 8" thick so we could have our very own skating pond, but it didn't freeze more than a questionable 1/4" crust on the surface of the water.

But that made for a peculiar sight when the waters receded. At Hour 36, I woke up to see this:

The water had frozen at its peak, then left little icy tutu's on all the trees as the water lowered.

So here's how the yard currently looks, as of Hour 72.

I really wouldn't mind a little green in the yard, but do you think my sisters in Oregon would spare just a fraction of their lush surroundings? Evidently not. Shipping is outrageous.


The water got to roughly 5' deep in several spots of my yard, 8' if you were unlucky enough to trip and fall into one of the many ditches scattered around.

My measuring methods included dunking a kayak paddle in various locations, and eyeballing this post from afar. I think I'm accurate to within plus or minus 8 inches, maybe.

I was afraid that I had lost our OTHER dock (yes, we lost half a dock a few weeks ago when there was a mini-Spring-thaw.) but I found it, tied up but desperately trying to flow downstream. You can't see it in the photos because it's halfway down the embankment, straining on its cable tether. I'm still hunting for objects that were previously in my yard, but are now completely gone. Missing are several blue plastic barrels, which most likely are halfway to the Mississippi by now. I found several of our makeshift bridges. Made from pallets, plywood, and other wooden refuse, they floated over to the other side of the Hwy 22 bridge and got lodged in some trees. Once the ground dries more (it's terribly muddy right now) I'll put them back where they belong.

The pallet-bridge my friends and I walked on at Hour -12, with ominous flood waters rushing swiftly down the ditch underneath it. The heavy brute was washed 200 yards downstream.


I've got dozens of photos and videos more, but I'll cease and desist. I'm afraid these photos aren't really that interesting if you haven't been to my place and ran around in my yard. So they're practically like an "outside" joke. Heh heh.

I'm expecting to see the yards dry up quickly, due to the extremely dry summer we had last year. I'm excited because this almost-annual flooding invariably coincides with the Annual Mosquito Hoedown & Family Get-Together, which starts in May/June. The puddles encourage mosquito breeding, so if all this is dried up, we won't have the infamous clouds of carnivorous insects that we get some years.

Aside from a few splashes from a misplaced paddle stroke, I kept myself high and dry for the duration of the flood. That is, until the day I saw dry land and started running around in the yard. I THOUGHT the massive puddle was only 12" deep, but the yard plummeted in an unexpected spot and I was instantly rewarded with freshly-defrosted water dumping into my water-proof boots. I slogged back to the house through two feet of water and took a long bath. I expect to feel my toes again sometime, hopefully by next month.

Keep your eye peeled to my Facebook account; I'll probably be posting more photos on there.

Iowa Weather

It's currently flooding in my yard.

We got 6 inches of snow on Tuesday, March 5th.

We've got 3 feet of water on Sunday, March 10th.

A scant 5 days later...

My friend Cody, kayaking in the yard. Cody sense of adventure is matched only by his colossal beard.

Cody enticed Victor and I to go kayaking with him, and I'm glad he did. I had just got home from taking a rowdy bunch of Kids Club kids to Iowa city, and I was ready to take a nap. But Cody persisted, and we had an excellent time, cruising around in the yard and fighting the slow but steady current that was doing its best to ship us to the Gulf of Mexico, free of charge.

The view off my back porch/grilling deck. Due to the heavy fog, you can't really see the bridge that we had a campfire under YESTERDAY, while the water was just a foot from overflowing the banks.


It'll be nice if the Spring melt flooding gets finished before summer, because that will curb the dense mosquito population that converges on this area whenever there's a puddle to spawn in.

"Out of the south cometh the whirlwind: and cold out of the north." -Job 37:9

This verse was most likely talking about Iowa (or perhaps the Midwest in general). We get snow AND rain in the same week.

I've lived in Iowa my whole life, but it still finds ways to surprise me. What next, Iowa? Meteorites? Tsunamis? An earthquake? An invasion of rednecks and/or hippies?

Lord have mercy.