Texas Is Never Boring

[Horsefly]

A guy at work said "at the end of every drought,there's usually a good rain".As silly as that is,it aint funny any more.After 5 years of severe droughts,flooding is still going on.I have no fences,not down but gone.Water went through my barn twice,the first time my weed eaters and mowers were drowned,and a lot of plywood and lumber I have stored in there is water soaked.My garden is wiped out,and we got more yesterday.The ceptic tank is full of rain water,so toilets only flush after a full day of no rain.After the droughts we had,I'm still not bitching about rain.Jerry

[odies dad]

Jerry, why don't you send some of that water up this way. We have only had about 3 1/2-4 inches of rain since the snow melted. We are DRY!

In the sand we live on we could get an inch per day and still be dry.

[Dr.Hess]

I wuz down there across the Red River in Deep East Texas for about 12 hours last weekend. It rained about the whole time.

 

After that year when we didn't have any rain, I said I'd never complain about it again.

 

Dr.Hess

 

[ShooterTom]

A while back I said about the rain, "keep it coming" I may want to revise that to, keep it coming in a more spread out manner. If this keeps up I will soon own lake front property. I don't want to have pay those taxes!! All in all I will take this over drought anyday.

 

 

Tom

[fritz]

Marble Falls, northwest of Austin, had 19+ inches last night. Their normal yearly total is 30 inches.

 

The Colorado River swept away just about everything when it rose ten feet rapidly. Maybe now that areas near the big towns are getting so much water, maybe they will store some of it and not be coming down here and trying to steal our water.

 

But, and there is always a but (sometimes spelled with two Ts), I doubt if they will take advantage of the windfall that Mother Nature has given them. My stock answer to big cities crying about running out of water is this: build some damned dams and reservoirs. Don't come down the river and use ours.

 

fritz

[Horsefly]

fritz,there was serious talk in North Tejas last summer about the water problem and the common answer was,we had to build more resevoirs.I'm afraid now,they'll drop the talk since we have flooding and too much water.Why don't we build more lakes while we can,before all the land is covered with mobile home parks??? 19''s of rain in the Hill Country where it's all rock and hills must have been something to see.Tom,I'll never say I want it to stop raining either.The last 5 years are way to fresh on my mind.I reckon you never saw Grapevine Lake full.It's been a long,long time since it was.Jerry

[odies dad]

Well, it's still dry here. However, dad got started cutting hay yesterday, so, we are due for a few weeks of rain.

[sonic1]

here i southern ok. wheats still in the field under water..has rained every day for 15 days in ok city..gaveup checking the rain gauge..didn:t want to walk through knee high water just to read it.

[fritz]

I was wondering what all that rain was doing to agricultural crops, you won't see it in the news. Instead you see how many homes and cars were washed away. Nothing about the crops in the fields (and in the case of wheat farmers, ready to harvest now).

 

Down here in south Texas we have been lucky, we get rains but no floods. And our crops are not ready for harvest, not the grain crops like corn. In fact this rain is only helping fill out the ears of corn grain. Cotton will not be affected until about August or September, when it is ready for harvest (and rain can hurt the quality of the lint).

 

All the rain around San Antonio will probably cause flooding on the San Antonio River that runs through here. The golf course may get flooded if it continues upstream. But that has happened several times before. One of the perils of living on a river.

 

As to hay, we made a good first cutting and this rain will ensure a good second cutting. Last year we were lucky to get one cutting. I am looking for three cuts this year. And the price of hay is not dropping----someone has finally figured out just how much it costs to raise it, and the fact that we often lose money on just one or two cuttings.

 

As for me, let it rain. But, as in all things, modesty is the best policy.

 

fritz

[Horsefly]

fritz,all the wheat was lost here in Tarrant,Denton,Cooke,Montaque,and collin County,at least that's counties I know folks in.It first sprouted,now its on the ground and coming up volunteer.A friends family in Denton Co. got 2 or 3 days combining in before it started raining again,and was cutting 60 bushels an acre.The most they had ever made,it just didn't last.Most corn feel over a month ago because of wet soil and stated to grow straight up again,but it's not any good.My ceptic tank is full of rain water,has been for 3 days,so yesterday I put a sump pump in and pumped it for 6 hours.Just when I finished and everything was working good,it came another frog strangler,and I reckon it rained all night.I was up before daylight digging up the lid again and got the pump going again.I'm pumping the water about 500ft. out on a bermuda patch.I know your not suppose to do that,but who ever complains will have to let me use their toilet.A couple houses up the road have arobic systems,and with water already standing on their yards,the treated water goes back to smelling like sewer.You can't smell my grey water running down the hill in the bermuda,but the arobic neighbors smell like a treatment plant.This is Tarrant Co.'s 2nd wetest June ever recorded.

Poor farmers planted their wheat last year only to see it never sprout.This year they watched it grow prettier than anyone can remember,only to watch it ripen,fall over,and resprout because they can't get the combines in the field.A friend lost all their crops,so they loaded all their harvest equipment up and went to Enid Oklahoma to help other family,and while there,other farmers came by to see if they'd combine their wheat,so now they're in to custom combining,and maybe will save their year.All these storms are coming from the south,dumping rain over Wichita Falls,up into Oklahoma where Sonic lives,starts turning at Oklahoma City,and comes back south to Tejas Del Norte.Sorry to be so long,but this is a big deal to me.Jerry

[roscoedoh]

I talked our Austin area manager Friday morning about all the rain they've been getting in his neck of the woods and he said that things down near him were starting to get pretty intense. Marble Falls got 19" of rain in 8 hours last week and he said it looked like a war zone down there. Everything was washed out and there were boats everywhere. Pretty wild stuff.