Our River Runneth Over

Two and a half inches of rain does not sound like much, but when it comes down during a 36 hour time frame, it piles up in a hurry! It rained at Pure Water Hollow beginning Friday night, all day Saturday and Saturday night, and had accumulated 2.5 inches in the official Pure Water Hollow Homestead rain gauge. Sunday was misty and wet, but not much accumulating water in the gauge. Monday was nicer with temperatures in the 60s but very windy, Tuesday was sunny and 70 degrees, and I think today is beautiful also. (Wish I could be out in it and know what the weather is like personally!)

The river in front of our house periodically runs over its banks during widespread rain events like this. It peaked Monday sometime after this was taken by Matthew from our lower overlook:




Matthew took several on Monday and Erica and Matthew both went up and took more pictures Tuesday, after the level had already gone down several feet. You can’t really tell any difference, but I thought I would post several of their pictures, as they show some slightly different angles and views:






It was not as big of a flood as we have had in the past, but it has been the first good one since I’ve been blogging and using Erica’s digital camera. One February, several years ago, the river got up 20 to 30 feet higher than it was this week. At that time all three roads to Pure Water Hollow were blocked by backwater and the only way we could have gotten out would have been over the mountains. With this flooding there were no roads blocked near us and only a few in other places of the county.

What did make this flood event unusual was the island of garbage and debris that go caught up at a new bridge they are building across the river a half mile away from our home. There is always too much garbage that comes down the river during high water times, but usually it goes right on its merry way on up to the Ohio and beyond.

One thing I am ashamed about eastern Kentucky is the garbage that some people dump indiscriminately into our beautiful hollows and streams. Times like this the problem really gets noticed. Here are some pictures of it. A picture like this one was on the front page of the home-town newspaper today:






They had to move all of their equipment out of the way of the water:






This support column is usually on land quite a ways from the river:




Here is the flat part of our river bank before you go down the steep part to the actual river:




The water had already gone down about 5 feet when these were taken. I hated to see what it did to our poor peach trees down there. We will have to get down and try to straighten them out as soon as the mud clears up some:




And up in the hollow, we have that pond that I have been talking about repairing. We almost lost the dam altogether this time, but it still held. This rain event highlighted the dire condition it is in, however, as more of it did wash away:




I had a meeting at our church Monday evening, but the roads were behind backwater over there. There was another way around, but I thought I would share a picture of the road going off into the abyss:




It is incredible to see God act through the forces of nature, and it is sad to see how mankind, through sin, has polluted this beautiful world that God has created. Floods make the river near Pure Water Hollow look dirty and ugly, but I am looking forward to seeing another river, one day, that will never be dirty or ugly. A truly Pure Water river:

"And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations." The Revelation 22:1-2