After the Rain

It hasn’t been a good year, but there have been worse ones, or so I try to remind myself. The world hasn’t been filled with much in the way of good news which make it easy to forget the better moments that happened. One needs to keep an eye open in order to catch those fleeting moments of magic that make life worth living.

A sunset drive last night in search of food to break the monotony of my diet featured an unspectacular sky leading me to leave my camera behind. So of course, I saw something I’d never seen before --  a column of rainbow light coming from the middle of a cloud on the horizon. No rainbow arch, just a nearly straight shaft of prismatic color descending from the sky like a psychedelic tornado, it caught my disbelieving eye.

Testing the FujiFilm HS25EXR, Part 2

More fooling around without a clue in order to see Fuji’s camera can do. As will become obvious, there is a lot to be learned yet. More photos and even a video only scratch the surface of what this far too capable mid-sized digital camera is capable of.



Ever behind on the times due to a lack of money, I feel like I’m constantly reinventing the wheel. It doesn't help I've forgotten everything about photography in the past five years. Due to dependency on automatic settings, pictures are never quite what I hope for, so expect to do better than this if you get your hands on the HS25EXR or one of its close relatives in the HS family.

In my previous post, I mentioned how post processing is needed to get good results. Spoiled by my Canon’s producing great results straight out of the viewfinder makes this a new experience. The two unaltered (other than resizing) shots above are a good illustration of why EXR mode is threatening my sanity.

Five Years Ago: The Rushford Flood

It is hard to believe that it has been so long since the August 18, 2007 flood that filled Rushford and the accompanying rains that heavily damaged much of Houston County. I just ate at The Creamery in Rushford and was explaining to a younger couple that the restaurant had been filled with four feet of water. Much of life has returned to normal in that small town, thankfully.

As part of my renovating the blog, I have been going back and properly tagging posts. This week happened to be the one assigned to that, so I have been looking at those posts and reliving what happened. I’ll let my words and photos from back then tell the story:

• The Flood Disaster of 2007
• A Wider Disaster
• A Town Drowned
• A Town Drowned Part Two
• A Town Drowned Part Three
• A Town Drowned – Photos, Part 1
• A Town Drowned – Photos, Part 2
• A Town Under Threat
• A Town Spared
• Hokah Hammered

Little did I know that less than a year later there would be more flooding locally and across the border in Wisconsin. Soldiers Grove took the hit during that one, but it was surreal to see such damage again is so short a time. There is nothing quite like the feeling of helplessness when faced with a natural disaster.

I really hope I never feel it again.

Hokah Hammered

Going East from Houston, I could see that the Root River had escaped its banks and then some. Looking like a giant had spilled a glass of chocolate milk, the muddied water had completely swamped fields and farms in the river valley. Traveling HWY 16 gave an idea of just how damaging all the rainfall had been. While there were areas that had been flooded over, apparently briefly, the bulk of the damage was from mudslides. The shoulder was in terrible shape, eroded soils had undermined the guard rails and many a post were dangling, suspended in mid-air. Entire hillsides had collapsed onto the highway and I can see why it took an entire day to open it again.



Approaching Hokah, I knew what to expect, floods are almost a way of life there. We even had an ice jam cause one during the winter a year and a half ago. So I've been mystified why people keep building businesses in the low end of town, even the best levees can't prevent everything. What was a surprise was seeing back yards missing from houses on the high end of Hokah. I looked up a street to see a garage in the street, then looked up to see the house above it partially collapsed. Not good.










The local Kwik Trip always floods when the Root River floods, so I wasn't surprised to see the used car lot next to it flooded. What I didn't expect was to see one car floating and others stuck partially in the overflooded plain next to it. I used the picture of the car in a previous post, but I'll use it again because it captures the mood of all this destruction well.











My dad pulled into the Kwik Trip, I didn't say anything because I'd told him the power was out in Hokah before we left. He was surprised to find it closed and we headed up to the downtown of the small village. There the Post Office was open and so was the small cafe, they had a generator going. We stopped in and had breakfast and ruminated on what we'd seen.




One of the things I always liked about Hokah was the wooden footbridge they had near the fire department. As you can see by the photo, it is no more.




We left Hokah and went home, Dad counted 16 major mudslides on the way back. Once home, the forecasts called for more rain, heavy rain.

The Flood Disaster of 2007

Photo by Patrick Boone

I really don't know where to begin, it has been a horrible weekend to end a tough week of a dismal summer. We'd been in drought conditions in our little corner of Minnesota and had finally gotten the rain we'd needed to save the crops over the last several weeks.

But then came Saturday, when the rain never ended and came in torrential downpours. I'd been manning the Houston County Republicans booth at the Houston County Fair and traffic had been above expectations Wednesday through Friday. Saturday was like being at a morgue, the rain and temperatures that never exceeded 62 degrees made it a dreary affair.

I was concerned about flooding as the water table was saturated, with nowhere for runoff to go. It was only that evening that I realized how bad things were going to be, remarking to my father that I'd probably not be able to go to church in Onalaska, WI the next morning due to flooding. He was skeptical, but I knew things were going to be bad and started formulating alternate routes around the Root River if State HWY 16 Houston to Hokah was flooded as usual. I'd check the info on the Net when I got up in the morning.

The power went out and didn't come back until around 10:30 or 11:00 am. With no Net and running a little behind because I needed to go to the PEC meeting at 8:30 am, I set out just before 7:15. The first thing I noticed was that we'd escaped major flooding in Yucatan Valley thanks to the creek beds having been considerably widened and deepened by 2000's massive flood. Then I started to have to veer around minor mudslides, nothing too much to worry about. As I traveled farther North, it became more apparent how many fields were flooded, with soy underwater and corn standing in one or two feet of water. Now the threat of drought had been replaced by destruction by water.

Campers and RV's passed by me, heading for higher ground and I noticed some parked at a local rural Lutheran church. Not a good sign, I thought. Sure enough, got up to HWY 16 and there was a pickup blocking the road, along with an earthen berm partially across one lane. Okay, expected that, so I turned into town and pulled to the side to call the Elders Quorum 2nd Counselor to see if he could make it to the meeting in time. Turns out he wasn't even in the area, so I decided to take a longer way to get to the La Crosse area, figuring I could even go to I-90 if the other road paralleling the Root River was flooded. That's when I found out the bridge at Houston was closed.

Being the determined sort, I headed back and took HWY 76 to Caledonia, going the really long way to Hokah and then La Crescent on. Now I began to run into more mudslides, some blocking entire lanes, but nothing I couldn't get around. After far too much time driving, I arrived at the intersection at the North end of Caledonia and the road block there. The road to Hokah was closed.

To be continued...