Woke up this morning (again!) to the sound of gentle rain falling. Looked at the rain gauge, and...we've now had just over 11 inches for the year-to-date. And it's still raining, and the weather service is predicting two to four inches more for this storm.
Debi and I took a short drive through our valley late yesterday afternoon, just to see what the rainfall's effects had been. Every dirt road (and there are lots of them out here) has erosion gullies on it, and streamlets running through or along them. A friend's property that normally has a dry streambed running through it now has a raging stream, eroding away the banks and falls at a visible rate. And the creek running through Lawson Valley is at levels we've never seen in our six+ years living out here. In some places, culverts under driveways have been overwhelmed, and the creek is flowing over the driveway as if it were a ford. Where the main road traverses the creek, so far the bridges and culverts aren't threatened — but you can see how they might be if we got even more rain! If that should happen, we have an alternate way out of the valley, up a four-wheel drive road that doesn't cross any streams. We normally think of that road as our "fire escape" — but it may turn out to have other uses...
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