Tag Archives: Dry Creek

Cleaning Culverts

With a break in the weather, we, with the help of our neighbors and their equipment, began addressing the plugged culverts that were spilling flood water across Dry Creek Rd. Though we had cleaned the debris from this culvert after the first Atmospheric River, it became impacted with sand with subsequent rains. Essentially, the culvert is too small for these kinds of events and with so many flooding issues in Tulare County, we are low on their priority list.

All in all, we cleaned out three culverts yesterday, two of which have needed attention for years. The weathermen have downgraded the amount of rain to expect in coming days, but on top of the 1,000 cfs already flowing down Dry Creek canyon, its impact rides with the intensity of those rains.

We’re ready as we can be and doing what we can without getting off the asphalt and getting stuck.

Damages Between Storms

 

Another 1.58″ in the last 24 hrs., 2-day total 3.79″, forecast of 4+” through Wednesday, 3/15.

  1. Both sets of brush catchers caught hell and will have to be replaced.  Eroded far bank, widened channel.

      2. Pipe fence we recently built to the creek acted like a brush catcher and is lying flat.

      3 & 4. Culvert on Ridenhour Creek couldn’t handle the flow, wiped out fence and gate braces.

Lots of hillside sloughing on Dry Creek Rd, plugged culverts everywhere.  Road closed.  Greater damages to surrounding roads and small towns, Woodlake, Exeter, Elderwood.  

We’re fine.

 

 

 

 

Dry Creek: March 10, 2023 Video

1:00 p.m. @ our driveway

Dry Creek, March 10, 2023

 

Dry Creek:

           2.28″ @ 6:00 a.m.

           6,000+ cfs (extrapolated) @ 8:00 a.m. (Dry Creek running above gauging station not calculated.)

 

Kaweah River:

          26,659 cfs @ 8:00 a.m.

 

Badger: 4.75″ @ 6:00 a.m.

 

Kaweah Watershed:  https://www.spk-wc.usace.army.mil/fcgi-bin/hourly.py?report=trm

 

MOTHER NATURE 101

 

 

1.

 

Thrum upon the roof,

the creek stretches loudly now,

rain streams day and night

 

from heaven’s dark skies—

a decade of dreams and prayers

descend upon us.

 

 

2.

 

Our totems come and go to rest

before our eyes, eagles and herons

inspect our souls without asking,

 

families of quail titter at our feet,

antlers tilt to consider our hunger

in places we mark in our memories.

 

 

3.

 

She doesn’t care, has no compassion

for our self-indulgence, shapes her track

of least resistance embracing landscapes,

 

rearranging the gravity of facts

we must endure when she leaves us

with fresh metaphors into the future.

 

 

SULPHUR PEAK 3,448′

 

Your robe’s frozen sleeve

reaches the creek once again,

my unending friend,

 

you carry both storm

and heaven on your shoulders

when I reflect up—

 

face unwavering

beneath sun and starlit night

always in the morning.

 

______________________________________

 

It’s been interesting weather, now half-way through our rainy season, over 18 inches of rain after a decade of drought.  Already whispers from the loudest drought complainers for relief as these hills leak crystal rivulets again. 

 

We lost a month in time in January to the Atmospheric River during branding season, and now with nearly 3 inches in the past 3 days and 3 inches more forecast for the next three, it will be at least a week before we can get to our upper country to brand the last bunch, putting us close to the middle of March.  These calves will be big, a handful.

 

The Paregien Ranch ranges from 2,000 to 2,600 with its own light blanket of snow now, time-released moisture soaking into the clay and granite ground that leaks down the smooth rock waterfalls of Ridenhour Canyon, adding to Dry Creek that peaked at 684 cfs last night, that probably washed out some of our watergaps replaced after January’s peak flow over 3,500 cfs.

Job security, but patience until we can get there—you can’t fight Mother Nature, just try to adapt and face the consequences—fully enjoy her luxuriant and persistent presence after so much needed moisture.

 

COMING ALIVE

 

 

After ten dry years, the drought-killed,

dead-standing oaks have shed their limbs

in piles, like clothes at their feet—some

 

centuries claiming space, offering summer

shade to cows, acorns to a host of hungry

mouths, hidden homes to hawks and lesser

 

feathered flocks—and have begun to tip

over as the rain-soaked earth lets go

of their decomposing roots to rest

 

on fences or across the dirt tracks

between us and our children grazing

the ridgetops: like emerald thighs, toes

 

reaching for the flats along the creek.

Despite the disassembled skeletons

of a generation passing that litters

 

and melts into the ground, lush canyon

and slope come alive to welcome and beckon

to embrace me for the first time

 

in a decade—and I overwhelmed, submissive

having spent my penance on unknown sins

I will confess just to prolong this moment.

 

 

RIBBON OF ROAD

 

RIBBON OF ROAD

 

                     Not the least hurt by this ribbon of road carved on their sea-foot.

                                          – Robinson Jeffers (“The Coast-Road”)

 

Fridays bring the caravans of Christians,

SUVs freeway-spaced and paced at sixty

up this snaky road to the pines and cedars

                                                                                    to pray

 

and low-snow weekends, the growl of mud grips

on decomposing asphalt, armies of colored jeeps

and shiny four-wheel drives drone up-canyon

                                                                                    to play

 

do not see these hills leaking with pleasure,

every wrinkle running with crystal streams

of rain, three weeks of storms rushing to

 

a rising, chocolate creek with foam, nor

the naked sycamores, leaves undressed,

white limbs dancing, rosy fingers reaching

 

for steamy clouds afloat upon the green

oak-studded slopes, black dots of cattle

scattered with all the legends gone before me.

 

JUST TO BEHOLD

 

 

Two coyotes lope across the road in the rain

in their retreat from the swollen creek, roaring

like prolonged thunder distantly—unafraid

 

for they are fat on rodents curled in flooded

burrows, tailings fresh.  The herons and egrets

will appear with the sun, stand guard like statues

 

in garden nurseries look alive.  Too wet to fly,

the sheltered hawks in the limbs of leafless trees

will spread their wings until their feathers dry.

 

And we too wait.  Some days it’s too wet—

too hot, too cold, or too dry to work—but once

in a while it makes more sense just to behold.

 

 

Dry Creek, January 9, 2023

3,500+ cfs @ 5:00 p.m.

 

Atmospheric creek,

miles of canyons into one,

now headed somewhere.