Author Topic: Which one of you jerks is building an ark?  (Read 10357 times)

Jamisjockey

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Which one of you jerks is building an ark?
« on: May 26, 2015, 09:28:50 AM »
http://www.khou.com/story/weather/2015/05/26/hundreds-stranded--flooding-overwhelms-houston-roadways/27946569/

5-10 inches of rain overnight in Houston.  We've gotten one of these storms weekly to bi weekly for about the last two months. All the bayous are at capacity already, ground is saturated, and the result is that there's no where for runoff to go and it overwhelms the drainage on the freeways around town especially.  Many are built a little too low, in an already low lying area.  And where they're built up, the water drains onto the frontages and causes flooding.
Don't buy a used car from houston anytime soon.

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Re: Which one of you jerks is building an ark?
« Reply #1 on: May 26, 2015, 09:38:39 AM »
Can you send some of it up thisaway?  =D
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Jamisjockey

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Re: Which one of you jerks is building an ark?
« Reply #2 on: May 26, 2015, 09:42:52 AM »
When we moved here we were in a drought.  Fire bans, some communities on conservation plans.  The roads were buckling in spots because the dry ground underneath was splitting open (clay in a lot of places).  Feast of famine I guess.
JD

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TechMan

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Re: Which one of you jerks is building an ark?
« Reply #3 on: May 26, 2015, 09:50:11 AM »
Ah sorry that would be me.  I thought it would be a fun project to do, but I guess not.
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Ben

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Re: Which one of you jerks is building an ark?
« Reply #4 on: May 26, 2015, 09:56:26 AM »
When we moved here we were in a drought.  Fire bans, some communities on conservation plans.  The roads were buckling in spots because the dry ground underneath was splitting open (clay in a lot of places).  Feast of famine I guess.

Yup. While CA is in its "worst drought ever", it's not all that much worse than the last really big one. First really major one I've been alive for though. Been around to witness several big flooding events, and have seen some interesting images from the turn of the century with people in the CA Central Valley getting around by boat.

Mother Nature can be a bitch, but that's Mother nature for you (versus anthropogenic global warming).
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roo_ster

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Re: Which one of you jerks is building an ark?
« Reply #5 on: May 26, 2015, 10:32:16 AM »
Similar situation in NTX.  Topography seems a bit more forgiving, though, flood-wise.
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Re: Which one of you jerks is building an ark?
« Reply #6 on: May 26, 2015, 10:51:23 AM »
Lived down there in the mid 90s. We had flooding on a big scale then. It was not fun.
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MillCreek

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Re: Which one of you jerks is building an ark?
« Reply #7 on: May 26, 2015, 11:00:54 AM »
I have often wondered if these sort of floods do much to recharge the water aquifers, for those places that rely on ground water.
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Brad Johnson

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Re: Which one of you jerks is building an ark?
« Reply #8 on: May 26, 2015, 11:18:14 AM »
I have often wondered if these sort of floods do much to recharge the water aquifers, for those places that rely on ground water.

The correct answer is "maybe".

If you have porous surface features, yes. In regions where the karst layer is exposed, direct rainwater recharge can be significant. Texas Hill Country is one of those area. Kentucky, Missouri, and Florida as well. In the High Plains where aquifers are under tens, sometimes hundreds, of feet of surface material, not so much. Recharge rates per unit area are glacially slow. Deep aquifers like the Ogalalla can require recharge areas many thousands of square miles in size with recharge cycles measured in decades, if not centuries.

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vaskidmark

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Re: Which one of you jerks is building an ark?
« Reply #9 on: May 26, 2015, 11:26:50 AM »
What's a cubit?  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bputeFGXEjA

Apparently G*d decided that backing up the sewers was the way to go.

stay safe.
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vaskidmark

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Re: Which one of you jerks is building an ark?
« Reply #10 on: May 26, 2015, 11:32:49 AM »
Can you send some of it up thisaway?  =D

How many 5-gallon pails worth are you looking for?  I'm pretty sure somebody on Craig's List is selling the stuff.  But you will have to come and pick it up.

Seriously, a guy could probably show a good profit bringing down a fleet of empty tanker trucks and heading home full.

stay safe.
If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege.

Hey you kids!! Get off my lawn!!!

They keep making this eternal vigilance thing harder and harder.  Protecting the 2nd amendment is like playing PACMAN - there's no pause button so you can go to the bathroom.

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Re: Which one of you jerks is building an ark?
« Reply #11 on: May 26, 2015, 11:49:21 AM »
The correct answer is "maybe".

If you have porous surface features, yes. In regions where the karst layer is exposed, direct rainwater recharge can be significant. Texas Hill Country is one of those area. Kentucky, Missouri, and Florida as well. In the High Plains where aquifers are under tens, sometimes hundreds, of feet of surface material, not so much. Recharge rates per unit area are glacially slow. Deep aquifers like the Ogalalla can require recharge areas many thousands of square miles in size with recharge cycles measured in decades, if not centuries.

Brad

Even with pretty porous soils, rain rate has a significant impact. I doubt whatever that river you guys have that rose an incredible 26 feet in less than an hour (!!!) did much in the way of soil penetration.
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SADShooter

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Re: Which one of you jerks is building an ark?
« Reply #12 on: May 26, 2015, 11:51:32 AM »
I was car surfing through Waco on IH35 yesterday afternoon. Loads of fun.
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Re: Which one of you jerks is building an ark?
« Reply #13 on: May 26, 2015, 12:45:38 PM »
We got quite a bit of rain up in the Austin, TX area, too - I'm just west of the city, and my rain gauge says I got 6" over the last few days - one of the lighter amounts in a 20-30 mile radius.

The good news is a lot of this fell upstream of Lake Travis, which has come up about 22' during the last 7 days; we're still about 15' shy of what's normal for May and about 26' below full, but having been through several years of drought with low lake levels this "rain bomb" is good for the local water supply.

Downside is lots of flooding - seeing the hills and valleys around here, I figured flooding could be a problem, so I bought a home that's about 150' higher than the spillway of Mansfield Dam, which created Lake Travis. But it seems a lot of morons people have built their homes and businesses on flood plains and next to creeks and streams to be near the water . . . guess they got their wish. Sadly, down in Wimberly (south of Austin) a number of folks are missing, presumed dead when the floodwaters swept away their home with them inside. (I think some were out-of-town visitors.)
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KD5NRH

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Re: Which one of you jerks is building an ark?
« Reply #15 on: May 26, 2015, 01:03:12 PM »
If you have porous surface features, yes. In regions where the karst layer is exposed, direct rainwater recharge can be significant. Texas Hill Country is one of those area. Kentucky, Missouri, and Florida as well. In the High Plains where aquifers are under tens, sometimes hundreds, of feet of surface material, not so much. Recharge rates per unit area are glacially slow. Deep aquifers like the Ogalalla can require recharge areas many thousands of square miles in size with recharge cycles measured in decades, if not centuries.

Also, there can be a lot of local variation, as well as shallower aquifers that pull a lot of the soak-through before it gets to the deeper (and better) ones.  Here, (Erath County TX) we have fairly poor water at around 25-35 feet, (Paluxy aquifer) and good water at around 300. (Trinity aquifer)  The soil types vary a lot, with sometimes three or four distinct types in an acre.  There are places on mom's 300 acres where it will be swampy for two weeks after a rain, and there's one odd depression that will be empty two hours after a huge rain (like the last three we've had) fills it two feet deep, and barely damp in a day or two.  Presumably, given its proximity to a 100+ year old hand dug well to Paluxy aquifer (which was probably pretty good water before the dairies and larger farms came to the area) it's over some crack in the bedrock that drains straight into that aquifer.  Thus Paluxy recharges, keeping cattle and irrigation wells going, and also providing headwater for the 200+ feet of very slow filter that leads to the Trinity.  (IIRC, about 4% of the rainwater here makes it to the Trinity aquifer eventually, though it is a fairly large source of the Edwards aquifer water, so yes, Jamis drinks my bathwater.)

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Re: Which one of you jerks is building an ark?
« Reply #16 on: May 26, 2015, 01:12:52 PM »
The correct answer is "maybe".

If you have porous surface features, yes. In regions where the karst layer is exposed, direct rainwater recharge can be significant. Texas Hill Country is one of those area. Kentucky, Missouri, and Florida as well. In the High Plains where aquifers are under tens, sometimes hundreds, of feet of surface material, not so much. Recharge rates per unit area are glacially slow. Deep aquifers like the Ogalalla can require recharge areas many thousands of square miles in size with recharge cycles measured in decades, if not centuries.

Brad

Iowa State University is doing a recharge study on the aquifers in some parts of MN, seeing if they are indeed ancient water or recharged recently.

The Atomic Bomb tests left some nice measurable remnants that can be used to date to a modern period.
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Brad Johnson

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Re: Which one of you jerks is building an ark?
« Reply #17 on: May 26, 2015, 01:25:27 PM »
... and there's one odd depression that will be empty two hours after a huge rain (like the last three we've had) fills it two feet deep, and barely damp in a day or two.

Erath Co is in the northwest part of the Lampasas Cut Plain karst region. It would be waaayyyyy cool to have that area geologically surveyed to see if the depression is indicative of a larger underground feature (i.e. cavern). Might give a local univeristy a call. Geologists love new field lab opportunities. Would be an easy, free way to determine if the area might be prone to a future sinkhole. Maybe even figure out a way to include a HS science class field trip. Give the kids a chance to lern em up sumpin.

Brad
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MechAg94

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Re: Which one of you jerks is building an ark?
« Reply #18 on: May 26, 2015, 02:34:21 PM »
Erath Co is in the northwest part of the Lampasas Cut Plain karst region. It would be waaayyyyy cool to have that area geologically surveyed to see if the depression is indicative of a larger underground feature (i.e. cavern). Might give a local univeristy a call. Geologists love new field lab opportunities. Would be an easy, free way to determine if the area might be prone to a future sinkhole. Maybe even figure out a way to include a HS science class field trip. Give the kids a chance to lern em up sumpin.

Brad
Be careful they don't get lost in the sinkhole though.  Or find a closed up aquifer full of dangerous man eating beasts. 
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KD5NRH

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Re: Which one of you jerks is building an ark?
« Reply #19 on: May 26, 2015, 02:40:19 PM »
Erath Co is in the northwest part of the Lampasas Cut Plain karst region. It would be waaayyyyy cool to have that area geologically surveyed to see if the depression is indicative of a larger underground feature (i.e. cavern). Might give a local univeristy a call. Geologists love new field lab opportunities. Would be an easy, free way to determine if the area might be prone to a future sinkhole. Maybe even figure out a way to include a HS science class field trip. Give the kids a chance to lern em up sumpin.

Yup.  The well was about 50 feet from the maybe 20x10 foot oval depression on the side of a ridge maybe 20 feet below the ridgeline.  The well collapsed in the last 5-6 years about 10-12 feet down, but I remember it having water in it during some of the driest times.  Right now the depression is pretty well choked with mesquite and grapevine, so I'd imagine even once the trees are cut, those mesquite taproots will complicate any sort of digging, but I think one of the cousins may have a core sample drilling rig (picked up at auction, and used to make a few 4" irrigation wells to the Paluxy aquifer for neighbors before disappearing into the giant barn o' crap we don't need right now) that would be educational to take up there and do some samples down to 40' or so.  

Bedrock depth along that part of the ridge seems to range from exposed crumbling limestone (gravel up to maybe 2 cubic foot blocks, though it's hard to say since larger blocks would have been carried off as building material a century ago) to much larger solid slabs about 8-10' down.  Farther down the ridge it runs more to high iron sandstone and some petrified wood, still of varying depth as parts have been washed out up to 8' deep and other parts moved around making farming fields, orchards, stock tanks and irrigation ditches, so it's hard to estimate where the natural ground level would have been.  If I could figure out what the depth is right there, and it's shallower than 6', even driving a rock bar down to it in a tight grid pattern could be educational to map out any fissures big enough for the bar to run into.

As it stands, it's a good 200 feet from anywhere we've even thought about building anything since the original workers' cabins that were dismantled right after the Depression ended, and nearly a quarter mile from any current buildings except one neighbor's doublewide maybe 350 feet on the other side of the ridgeline.  Frankly, if there is a semi-dry cavern down there, I'd want to open it up if for no other reason than to have some truly tornado proof storage/shelter.

Be careful they don't get lost in the sinkhole though.  Or find a closed up aquifer full of dangerous man eating beasts.

I've always wondered what saber tooth tiger tastes like.  Bet I could charge millions for the hunt.

Brad Johnson

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Re: Which one of you jerks is building an ark?
« Reply #20 on: May 26, 2015, 03:22:40 PM »
Slivered and polished petrified wood is pretty saleable. If you have a fair quantity laying about, might be worth getting a small diamond saw and some polishing media.

Brad
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KD5NRH

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Re: Which one of you jerks is building an ark?
« Reply #21 on: May 26, 2015, 03:36:54 PM »
Slivered and polished petrified wood is pretty saleable. If you have a fair quantity laying about, might be worth getting a small diamond saw and some polishing media.

What's exposed has been picked over for more than a century.  Pieces bigger than a McNugget aren't too common there, though I did recently gift a friend a piece about that size that had a couple of very sparkly veins of quartz crystals showing in the wood grain for her collection.  One of those bits that didn't look like much until I knocked the dirt off in full sunlight, then it was a definite keeper.

RoadKingLarry

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Re: Which one of you jerks is building an ark?
« Reply #22 on: May 26, 2015, 06:00:25 PM »
We hit "wetest May on record" over the weekend and we still have almost a week more of rain forecast.  I'm about to lose my garden to grass and weeds, just too wet to even walk in it.
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MechAg94

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Re: Which one of you jerks is building an ark?
« Reply #23 on: May 26, 2015, 10:37:28 PM »
My parents live West of Houston near the Colorado River.  There is a fair sized creek near them that backs up whenever the river is high.  It is backed up 10 or 15 feet or so above the banks flooding some lower level land.    The Colorado River is up pretty high compared to just a few months ago.
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Jamisjockey

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Re: Which one of you jerks is building an ark?
« Reply #24 on: May 27, 2015, 09:16:29 AM »
And more rain today.  Moving through north of town, but the watershed all drains this way.  Houston proper has gotten a couple inches already.  Looks like the tail of the little trough that dragged on by is producing some heavy rain and that might come our way.
Several rivers down this way are expected to hit 10'+ above flood stage this weekend.
http://www.khou.com/story/news/local/2015/05/27/search-for-missing-couple-to-resume-along-brays-bayou/28001249/
http://www.khou.com/story/news/local/texas/2015/05/27/midlothian-dam-near-fort-worth-expected-to-break-at-any-moment/28001639/
JD

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