From Gurgling to Raging
Last week, the weather reports, once again, were forecasting heavy winds and driving rain throughout the weekend. As it turned out, this was no idle threat because what arrived was one stubborn storm, bringing with it, hurricane force winds and torrential downpours. I felt extremely fortunate that the Bedford area was spared any great damage because so many surrounding locals were hit extremely hard. Huge trees were toppled, homes were wrecked, electricity was lost, and low-lying areas were badly flooded. I was also deeply saddened to hear of loss of life associated with this storm.
On Saturday evening, when the winds subsided, I took a drive around my farm to survey any damage, which was minimal. What was impressive were all of the streams on my property. After more than five-inches of rain that fell in a very short period of time, those gurgling rivulets became raging torrents. I shot these photos at around 8 PM. How did you fare during this storm? We’d love to hear.
- This raging brook is normally a gurgling little rivulet.
- In many places, the water ran way over the banks and onto surrounding woods and fields.
- In this photo, you can clearly see the raging waters flooding the woods.
- This is a very deep pool that formed – the rising river waters swept sticks and twigs from the banks, towards their ultimate destination – the Cross River Reservoir.
- The churning waters were quite muddy from all of the erosion, caused by the heavy rains and high winds.
- The little bright dots you see are actually illuminated rain drops, caused by the light of the camera flash.
- When the water rushes like this, I wonder what becomes of the small fish that live in the shallows of the streams. Do they, too, wash down to the reservoir?
- In dry weather, there is no stream, whatsoever, here. These low areas become small rivulets to accomodate the flowing water from the rains and the drains.