How I Spent My Weekend

I was going to spend this weekend and next on the banks of the Walnut River at the Walnut Valley Festival, doing the warmup chillin' for this week's National Flat-pick Guitar Championship, National Bluegrass Banjo Championship, National Hammer Dulcimer Championship, the National Mountain Dulcimer championship, International Autoharp Championship, and International Fingerstyle Guitar Championship. This is the WVF in a normal year--see that pretty river curling around three sides of it? Hmmm, wonder why they have a major levee over there on the east....

More after the break.

I set up camp Thursday morning. It was drizzling, but nothing major. The river was at 2.5 feet. And that night, far upstream and many miles away, it rained. It rained a lot. As in a foot or more in 18 hours. Which, of course, ran downstream. I returned 24 hours after I set up to tear down again. While I could. The river was now at 18 feet, and rising. This is the Walnut River at 18 feet (right at flood stage) as seen from the campgrounds:

Well, maybe it'll go down again. So check the river hydrograph and pray...

Nope, definitely time to run away. Tore camp back down, and headed out, along with a couple thousand other "camping units." Called in and volunteered for light duty with the disaster teams. On the way home to do my civic duty, I took a couple pictures of the Arkansas River a few miles to the west of Winfield, at Oxford, KS. This is the Ark getting angry:

A view from the highway bridge, to give an idea of scale:

That was the Arkansas River at 14 feet, just under flood stage. It eventually crested at about 24 feet, ten feet higher than in the photo. Yes, that bridge closed for a while. And the Walnut? It eventually crested at 32 feet around Sunday noon, fourteen feet higher than in the campground photo. I understand a few folks didn't get to their gear and/or campers in time. Despite the best efforts of the WVF to drag out what friendless units they could, some are no doubt now in Oklahoma.

Back in town, parts of the west side had a couple of feet or more of water rolling through the neighborhoods, many roads were dangerously deep and the deadly creek crossings obscured, and the smaller towns up north on the river were seriously endangered, parts flooded. So mostly I spent my weekend either sitting at home warming up and drying out, or standing in the rain in an orange rainsuit, wearing a lime-green vest and directing people away from roads running into deep water. "No, ma'am, I really can't let you by the barricades just to grab a few things, we'd only have to come rescue you or recover your body." Directing fools away from doom definitely beats filling sandbags.

Next year I'm leaving the tent at home, and taking a houseboat. But it could have been much worse. I could have gone to Galveston.