A Ten Year Storm

Note: This was written for 28 August 2022.

Weather: It rained five of the ten days from August 17 to August 26.  There was 2" of water in the trash bins on Monday.  After they were emptied, it rained Monday night, and there was 3" of water in the bottoms Tuesday morning.  Since I’m the one who brought in the bins, rather than my neighbor, I tipped mine sideways, so don’t know how much water we got on Friday.  The internet went down, and stayed down until September 6 so I couldn’t get information before it disappeared from the weather bureau website.

Clouds passed through around 9 am on Friday, then some rain fell from about 3 pm to 3:30 pm.  I heard some thunder around 4:25 pm that became a continuous rumble by 4:35 pm.  Then it started.

I heard the first drops on the metal roof at 4:59 pm, and it was coming down within a minute.  Visibility disappeared as rain filled the air.  I could see water blowing horizontally across the prairie just inches above the grasses.  By 5:02 pm, just three minutes after the first drops, water was running down my driveway, collecting near the down spout for the front of the house, and pooling around shrubs that were getting the overflow from the back of the building.

Water continued to come down hard, with only slight breaks until 5:30 pm.  When I ventured outside a few minutes later, I heard the arroyo running a quarter mile away.  The last time I thought I heard it roar was 2018, and before that 2016.

Some residual rain fell, but not enough to stop water from sinking into the ground.  When I woke at 11 pm, it was raining quietly.  It probably just had started, and didn’t last long.  When I awoke again at 5 am, I could see stars in a black sky.

Last useful rain: 8/26.  Week’s low: 55 degrees F.  Week’s high: 84 degrees F in the shade.  No winds over 25 mph in Los Alamos or Santa Fé.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid roses, yellow potentilla, buddleia, trumpet creeper, silver lace vine, purple morning glories, red-tipped yucca, Russian sage, purple salvia, sweet peas, David and purple garden phlox, bouncing Bess, rose of Sharon, winecup mallows, cultivated and farmer’s sunflowers, cushion chrysanthemum, black-eyed Susans, marigolds, zinnias, yellow yarrow; pyracantha berries orange, apples and peaches beginning to fall from trees

What’s blooming beyond the walls and fences: Apache plume, datura, green leaf five eyes, silver leaf nightshade, bindweed, scarlet creeper, ivy leaf morning glory, alfalfa, leather leaf globe mallow, nits-and-lice, Queen Anne’s lace, stick leaf, alfilerillo, yellow evening primroses, velvetweed, toothed spurge, prostrate knotweed, goat’s heads, green amaranth, pigweed, Russian thistles, lamb’s quarter, chamisa, snakeweed broom, native sunflowers, ánil del muerto, Hopi tea, tahoka daisies, goldenrod, wild lettuce, horseweed, strap leaf and golden hairy asters, ragweed, dandelions; Nebraska sedge, ring muhly, six-week and black grama, brome, timothy, barnyard, and quack grasses

What’s blooming in my yard: Miniature and floribunda roses, cliff rose, garlic chives, hostas, Johnson blue geranium, large flower soapwort, lead plants, lady bells, sidalcea, hollyhocks, golden spur columbine, perennial four o’clocks, blue flax, pink evening primroses, tomatillo, chocolate flowers, anthemis, Mönch asters, Mexican hats, blanket flowers, lance leaf and plains coreopsis, Sensation cosmos, white yarrow

What bedding plants are blooming: Snapdragons; petunias in pots in the village.

What’s blooming from this year’s seed: Sweet alyssum, cantaloupe, honeydew and watermelons, bachelor buttons

Animal sightings: Rabbit, hummingbird, geckoes, lady bug, monarch and cabbage butterflies, hummingbird moth, small and bumble bees, hornets, mosquitoes, house flies, sidewalk ants; hear crickets

Tasks: Usually this time of year I note the number of cuts farmers have made in their hay fields.  This year, the more important statistic is the number of times we’ve cut down our weeds.  I’ve used the string trimmer twice along the outer drive, my uphill neighbor had mounted his mower twice, and by west neighbor has had the yard scrapped two times.  Farmers cut brome grass and alfalfa in late July.

Weekly update: The rains Friday caused serious flooding for the first time in ten years.  Water used to come gliding over the top of the prairie until it hit the lip of my retaining wall.  Then, it came through the openings in the top tier of rail timbers, and washed out the plants below.

I stuck pieces of Talavera tile in the places where water seeped through the wall.  More important, my uphill east neighbor created a smaller berm and ditch that extended almost to the end of his property.

I hadn’t been flooded again, that is, until Friday.  Then it came under the fence, hit the wall, sank, and came through the openings in the lowest timbers.  Next, the water collected in the garden beds that were edged by bricks to keep the soil from washing down the slope.  Once it filled the beds, the water washed over the edge and through the crevices of the unmortared bricks.

My first response was panic of the “oh no, everything I’ve ever done is being washed away.”  I connected it to the big wind in April that changed the native parts of my yard from prairie and scrub into Russian thistle havens.

Then, more calmly, I asked what exactly changed.  One possibility was that my neighbor’s berm had disappeared.  Without constant renewal, winds level high spots and fill openings.  I walked out through the dense Russian thistles on the prairie and looked.  Sure enough, he had done nothing since he first dug it.

There’s nothing to be done there.  Neighbors are like acts of Nature that can’t be controlled.

Then, I realized I had made some changes that prevented the water that flowed under our shared fence from doing damage.  I had installed a block walk between the fence and the retaining wall so I could walk through there.

When the rain was coming down, I watched it flow down another block path into the gravel driveway.  It functioned like any urban pavement that captures and channels water.  However, the one by the retaining was not parallel with the flow of water.  In most places the 1.5" thick blocks are not level with the ground.  Along the fence, they first stopped the water from progressing.  Then, when the water in the temporary reservoir reached the top of the blocks, it flowed along the blocks and away from the retaining wall.

The block walk meant the problem was with the retaining wall itself.  I wondered if the ground squirrel tunnels had created a problem, then decided we’ve had so much rain that the water had sunk farther into the ground, and so reached a lower level.

It was then I remembered I had noticed some deterioration in the bottoms of some timbers.  I didn’t check it out when I saw it because, years ago I saw a black widow spider in the wall, and have never put a hand near it since.

That’s a serious problem, and I don’t yet know the solution.

In the meantime, all I can do is routine maintenance.  Ever since I dug the ditches with a hoe, garlic chives, winecup mallows, and dandelions have colonized the bottom.  I added pavers to keep them down.  It reduced my work, but also the volume of water the ditches could carry.

I retrofitted pavers into the ditch bottom.  Since they weren’t part of the design, there were gaps between them and the bricks lining the ditches.  In June, I pried out the bricks on one side of the ditch that had sunk into the mud, and reset them next to the pavers.  I added some soil behind them to expand the bed a few inches.

When I looked at the pictures, I saw that that part of the Ditch had done just exactly what it was supposed to, even if it was temporarily overwhelmed.  Everything got flooded, but nothing washed away.

Notes on photographs:
1. Stick leaf (Mentzelia nuda) blooming late in the afternoon, 27 August 2022.

2. My uphill neighbor’s berm, 19 November 2011.

3. Water rushing through the retaining wall at 5:34 pm, just after the rain had let up on 26 August 2022.

4. My uphill neighbor’s berm now, 27 August 2027.

5.  Water running down a block path, with garlic chives on either side, at 5:36 pm on 26 August 2022.

6.  Water dripping through the damaged part of the retaining wall at 5:47 pm, after the rain had stopped on 26 August 2022.

7.  Ditch carrying away water at 6:47 pm, after the rain had stopped and some water was sinkng into the bed on 26 August 2022.