Melting Snow

[Dave]

Melting snow means high water when there is a lot of snow. The river is supposed to be to the left of the trees in the first picture. It should also be about 5 feet shallower. From the looks of the corral I should be raising rice or water buffalo. Maybe both. The mud puddles in the driveway have grown with assistance from the river. The head gate on the irrigation ditch is closed. But there is so much water running over it that the ditch can't handle all of it. Water it running out of the ditch back into the river. Ditch to the right and river to the left. The 3 foot culvert under the driveway can't handle all the flow from the ditch so it is also running over the driveway. We have genuine "flood irrigation" in the front field. Good thing there isn't any hay left in the stack yard because the bottom bales would be sitting in 8-10 inches of water. Actually me and all of the neighbors have every tap wide open. We need to relieve pressure in the ditch. There is a lot more water going down the ditch than it was designed to handle. We don't want the dike to wash out. That would create even more problems. One of the good things is the down the ditch guys aren't complaining that we are taking too much water.

 

[wbvs58]

We've just been through a couple of years of water surplus to our needs, you sorta don't want to complain too much.

Ken

 

[Dave]

We've just been through a couple of years of water surplus to our needs, you sorta don't want to complain too much.

Ken

Oh I am not complaining. Just reporting on what is happening. Other than the irrigated ground along the river this is a desert. Or at least mighty close to being one. And we are probably just an average year for precipitation. What happened here is a good build up of snow in the mountains. The weather went from late snows to real warm weather. This snow melt makes for a lot of run off. All of the reservoirs are full or filling quickly. Which will make for plenty of irrigation water this summer.
It is barely cracking dawn right now. It looks like the puddle in the driveway has shrunk so the water might be going down. There is enough junk that floated down and piled at the head gate that it is going to be a witch to clean out once the water goes back to normal. Hopefully that is the only damage we have to deal with.

 

[GoWyo]

No effort corral cleaning service

 

[wbvs58]

Oh I am not complaining. Just reporting on what is happening. Other than the irrigated ground along the river this is a desert. Or at least mighty close to being one. And we are probably just an average year for precipitation. What happened here is a good build up of snow in the mountains. The weather went from late snows to real warm weather. This snow melt makes for a lot of run off. All of the reservoirs are full or filling quickly. Which will make for plenty of irrigation water this summer.
It is barely cracking dawn right now. It looks like the puddle in the driveway has shrunk so the water might be going down. There is enough junk that floated down and piled at the head gate that it is going to be a witch to clean out once the water goes back to normal. Hopefully that is the only damage we have to deal with.

I probably didn't word that well Dave but in my case as much as I found our waterlogged conditions inconvenient I was never game to complain about it knowing that drier times is always just around the corner.

Ken