A Buggy and Stormy Start of Summer

I haven’t been posting much due to ongoing issues with Dad’s health, my health, and no excess energy to speak of. My father ending up back in the hospital for two days of observation to start June which capped off a disastrous May when his removed gastric tube opening took too long to heal. A raging fever, loss of balance, and the return of the uncontrollable hiccups led to reopening that wound along with the hospital stay.

While he was in Gundersen Hospital, I had a visitor on the kitchen screen door that spooked an aquaintance delivering some electronics for me to wipe. The frightening creature turned out to be one of the large Polyphemus moths that live in the region. There is no need to fear being bitten by these gentle giants for they don’t even eat as adults. Sadly it causes them to have a short lifespan of a week or so due to starvation.

The Day After the Flood

Floods do a lot of damage and the full extent of it doesn’t show up until after the water recedes. With that in mind, I went out and took some videos of the damage in the Yucatan Valley and near Houston, MN. Between building a new computer and family visiting, I didn’t get a chance to post what I’d shot.

Here it is at last:

After the Flood

Notice the Ace Communications trucks clustered at the Yucatan town hall. Amazing as it seems, we never lost the Internet during the flood. Others were not so lucky and also had their phone lines out. I used transitions to mark where we traveled on different roads. Okay, it was an excuse to use transitions, I confess.

In order to stitch things together and remove the sound, I ended up having to buy software for the task, Corel VideoStudio Pro. This is my first attempt with it and also using YouTube to host. One of these days I’ll get something that can record better than 480P, but not anytime soon.

Better Pictures of the 2013 Yucatan Flood

All photos are courtesy of Randy Roland, neighbor and friend. Most of the following pictures were taken around 10:00 AM and show some differences from the 5:00 AM ones that I took.

Once again we start close to home at the intersection where the old Yucatan Supper Club once operated. Water has never stood in the area shown despite prior floods and heavy rains.

Creamery Drive was still under five hours after first light. The new bridge held up well but the water simply went over the road in front and behind. It shows man’s limitations in dealing with the weather in a rather pointed fashion.

Yucatan Is Flooding

There isn’t going to be a lot of text for this, I took these pictures shortly after 5:00 AM. Large amounts of rain has produced flooding and I need to go check on things again soon. Houston County in Minnesota is not a safe place to travel right now and people need to stay at home or seek higher ground if needed.

UPDATED 6:30 PM

I’m copying this from the National Weather Service storm report because links move around when they update. Suffice it to say that things are not good:

PRELIMINARY LOCAL STORM REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE LA CROSSE WI
407 PM CDT SUN JUN 23 2013

..TIME...   ...EVENT...      ...CITY LOCATION...     ...LAT.LON...
..DATE...   ....MAG....      ..COUNTY LOCATION..ST.. ...SOURCE....
            ..REMARKS..

0405 PM     FLASH FLOOD      HOUSTON                 43.76N 91.57W
06/23/2013                   HOUSTON            MN   EMERGENCY MNGR

            STATE HIGHWAY 16 CLOSED 2 MILES EAST OF HOUSTON. STATE
            HIGHWAY 76 CLOSED BETWEEN CALEDONIA AND HOUSTON.
            PRELIMINARY ESTIMATE IS 2 MILLION DOLLARS IN DAMAGE.
            STATE OF EMERGENCY DECLARED FOR COUNTY. 20 TOWNSHIP ROADS
            CLOSED. WIDESPREAD COUNTY ROADS CLOSED.

Riceford Creek is over its banks, this is Creamery Drive at the intersection with County 4.

Standing water is merging with the flooding near the intersection. Further North, the junction of Riceford Creek and the South Branch of the Root River is rising rapidly. Both are out of their banks. There is at least one mudslide near there.

Memorial Day 2013

It is a rainy and cold day that adds a somber atmosphere to the day set aside in the United States to remember those who have given the ultimate sacrifice for their country. Many people confuse Memorial Day with Veterans Day, but this day is for those fallen in battle. A gloom has fallen on this holiday weekend, traditionally more a time to grill outside and for families to gather from afar.

I feel an odd foreboding today and have no inspiration to write the kind of post I’d like to. Browsing through my photos, I find that ones of the county memorial exist only in my memory and not on my hard drive. Instead, this photo of the M3A3 Stuart tank from World War II on display in Houston will have to suffice.

Many have sacrificed all so that the rest of us can exercise our agency and enjoy freedom. Sadly, I think remembrance of their deeds is fading in our ever more self centered society. I’m grateful for the way they laid down their lives for a greater good and I hope more of my fellow Americans will reflect on the true meaning of the day.

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.

Large and Small

Been an interesting couple of days in the news, so more links that caught my eye:

It has often surprised me how I find stories being reported in the UK on events in the USA that aren't getting a lot of attention, ones that should be.  Take designer children for instance.  I had no clue this was actually being done, now I find the specter of eugenics rearing its ugly head again reported in a foreign newspaper.  The narcisissm and selfishness of people is astounding, allowing immoral acts like this to be profitable.  Simply wrong and not good for our culture.

I refuse to "tweet." For those unfamiliar with the term, it is posting short little snippets on Twitter.  If Twitter (actually all texting) isn't a sign of the dumbing down of the West, I don't know what is.  Now it is being compromised, just like MySpace and Facebook have, with worm attacks. While not as severe, it shows the inherent weakness of social networking sites to data theft.  I'm on Facebook and never warmed to it due to the triviality of the atmosphere, so my checking in is getting more infrequent. Frankly, it is a stultifyingly boring time waster.

Two years ago, Rushford, MN flooded and amongst the losses was the Tenborg Community Center.  It was a great place to hold political conventions and meetings, located at a reasonable distance for people from Fillmore, Houston, and Winona counties.  I grew fond of the place and was saddened by it becoming a total loss, when I'd hoped it would be rebuilt or at least replace by a new one.  Now it looks very much like the financial disaster of our time is making it unlikely, unless help from private enterprise enters the picture. That's too bad, as Rushford is a good location.

Things could be worse. At least I don't have a former neighbor trying to blow me up with a mail bomb.  Even small towns have weird things like this happening these days, so I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised by Houston, MN getting its share.  Fortunately, no one was harmed, but still...

A Town Spared

With the mandatory evacuation ordered in Houston and more rain coming, it was a long night. The last thing I wanted to see was the town flooded out and given that Ace Telephone is headquartered there, phone service across two counties could be affected. As it was, the Internet was already out and they are the main provider in the area. Being thoroughly modern, I get most of my information off of the Internet these days and the National Weather Service serves as my home page. With no net, there was no way to watch the radar returns on demand.

No matter, I'll watch the Weather Channel, they must be covering things here. Nothing but Hurricane Dean with a few mentions of flooding in Minnesota. It was clear that the old media wasn't keeping up due to their dwelling on the flashy prospects of hurricane damage. Information from local sources was haphazard due to the amount of damage done throughout the area and in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Then there was the Sunday effect, things slow down around here on Sundays, it isn't a big city market.

So information was limited. Mainly, it was text scrolling at the bottom of the screen that gave any idea of what was going on, it seemed as if every road and highway was damaged or closed. There were two deaths in Houston County now, one around Mound Prairie, the other by Spring Grove. Phone calls to and from friends revealed water standing high South of Caledonia and massive road damage North of Houston. I heard about Church members cut off by their driveway simply ceasing to exist.

It was a long night and the next morning at least brought back the Internet. The Root River had come within half a foot of topping the levee at Houston, but the levee held and the water was going down. Friends in Hokah weren't reachable until they called later in the day, they were cut off from every direction and had a beach where their lawn used to be.

My father and I decided to head out and see if anything could be done to help in Houston and promptly ran into a traffic jam of people trying to return home. A humvee with Army National Guard troops was blocking the way into town and questioning everyone returning. Realizing we wouldn't be allowed in, we instead decided to take HWY 16 to Hokah and find out how bad travel was going to be.

A Town Under Threat

It isn't often you get stopped in traffic by a helicopter landing in front of you, but that was the strange situation we found ourselves in Sunday afternoon. With water on the way from Rushford, I'd prodded the rest into going back home before roads closed. Sure enough, the flashers on one of Houston County's newest patrol cars could be seen just entering the outskirts of town. As we slowed to a halt, I heard the helicopter and our family friend said "Look, a news helicopter." I let him know that it was a military helicopter, a UH-60 Blackhawk to be precise and that this meant trouble.

The Blackhawk circled briefly and then went behind us, only to return directly overhead. The van rocked in the downwash of the main rotors and I hurriedly got my camera out.

The helicopter ever so slowly slid down to a landing behind the sheriff's car and we got out of the van for a better look.


I only saw Army personnel get off the UH-60 and I suspected that they had been surveying the levee, or possibly performing search and rescue. It was some time before they took off again and they flew over the levee toward Rushford.



Traffic slowly picked up and we headed home, a sense of urgency and gloom had become the order of the day. I turned on the TV and saw that a mandatory evacuation of Houston had been ordered.

Continued...

A Town Drowned Part Two

Photos by Patrick Boone

After going back home, a friend called, excited by the prospect of seeing some flooding. He wanted to come out to our place in the country and then go see Rushford. The attitude rubbed me the wrong way, but I wanted to check Rushford out because what happens at the Root River there always comes downstream to Houston. My concern about the town and the fields between won out over being irked at the friend, so the three of us set out for Rushford in the afternoon.

The water was no higher in the Yucatan valley than before, in fact it was visibly going down. There was too much crop damage for my liking and I wondered how things were in Houston proper. Our friend wanted to go North on HWY 76 and didn't really believe it would be blocked. Seeing is believing and so we went there. The bridge goes over the river and I wanted to see how the levee was holding, knowing that Rushford's had failed to save that town.


The Civil Air Patrol was manning the barricades and while the others looked at the swollen river, I talked to the man who was explaining things to drivers. Overhearing him telling people that a volunteer evacuation was under way "for the moment", I asked,"Was the surge here yet?" His reply was less than comforting, "There are 48 inches of water coming this way!"

I rounded up the other two and it took several miles of driving to get them to understand that an evacuation was imminent. We needed to get to Rushford, ASAP.

Continued...

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...