Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Texas Flooding

Hoping all you in Texas and your families make out fine through the recent events.

Too bad a drought has to end with floods, but such seems to be the way with nature. miles

Stevie Ray Vaughn.

I can't get my head wrapped around a 17 foot rise in 30 minutes and a 33 foot rise in a few hours.

Thanks Scott, things are getting back to normal and after 8 years of drought, it's a little weird. Fishing has sucked all spring because of the heavy rains but the woodland game is really doing well. I saw a bunch of fawns, baby turkeys and two big coveys of quail yesterday, one of which was at least 25 birds. That's more quail then I've seen in East Texas in the past twenty years.

Ive seen it happen on a lesser scale on our local Leon Creek, which has killed folks.

Hadn't rained where I was walking the dogs, but did overnight in the north of town. Walking along on dry land and suddenly its like scenes from the movie Titanic, the edge of the moving water creeping up across the ground while you watch. Time to head for higher ground like right now.

That had to be an amazing rise.

Still 8 missing with one confirmed dead so far.

For 400 houses washed away, 9 dead really is not that bad, considering it was all middle of the night.

Weather services did an outstanding job of predicting this for days, just not the exact amount, location and time, but you would think with all the warnings and watches out....

Prayres for the families!

And round I dunno which now, coming today supposedly.

RE drought ending with floods, there is almost no other way. Simple 1-2 inch rains will not raise a lake 60 feet. Its pretty much a given that a drought will end with floods and only that way.

Quail and turkeys all over here too, I put up a cover of quail this weekend. Can't remember the last time this happened.

For anyone that hasn't seen a "wall of water" come down a river, it would be worth the effort to do so. Safely of course.

Best example I saw was in '97 on the Frio River. We got the news that it was on a rise due to severe rain upstream, and was headed down.

I knew a place where there was a pretty high bridge and went there to await the wall of water they had talked about. I wasn't alone. There were a couple hundred folks there at the bridge.

I took a position on the bridge and we all waited, and watched upstream...

You could hear the water before it got there. It wasn't a loud roar, but you could hear it coming in the dry riverbed.

There was a bend in the river upstream a bit more than a quarter mile from the bridge, and that was where the wall of water emerged.

It was more like a 4-5ft high wave of mud, trees, and debris as it rolled downstream. The closer it got, the louder it became. Not deafening, but it was there.

The position on the bridge was perfect for viewing the event. It was worth the effort.

The initial wave carried lots of mud, trash and debris on it's wake. Ice chests, plastic jugs, trash, lots of wood from houses in the path upstream... Nasty, rolling, blackish brown water.

After the initial wave, the river began the rise. It didn't take long... The river was coming up very fast, and the debris was still in the river, a constant supply of it. Bigger trees and bigger trash and lumber rode the rise.

After about 30 minutes, the rise started to slow a bit, but it was still rising steadily. The mental picture you had of the river and banks was now nothing like before the rising water.

I don't know how high the water rose there, because myself and a few others got in our trucks to head down to the next bridge that was few miles downstream, so that we could watch the whole thing over again...

It had lost none of the power as we watched it a second time.

It made an impression.

These things are rough enough that even a PFD may not save you.

If that was at the 1050 Bridge at Garner, my buddy's house is right in that bend you mention. It's pretty easy to see how the Frio Canyon was formed when you see that.

Garner was where the flood hit first. Took out several campgrounds and more houses downstream.

I watched the spectacle downstream from Uvalde.

I've got an itch to drive out to Medina Lake and check it out after being a puddle for the last 4 years or so. If my math is correct it rose around 40 feet in the last week. Still way low but maybe now it resembles a reservoir.

Pecos at US 90 last fall. One of them all of a sudden things. A few inches upstream.

Was thinking about you yesterday Pat. I checked the radar weather pic and it looked like it was right on top of you....

Lots of lakes have cameras.See if I can get a link to the web site so you can access it.http://www.lakelevels.info/?StateID=TX

Joe McComb lost his daughter in law and grand children in wimberly. pretty sad, good family done lots of work for Joe over the yrs.

Very sad situation.

No worries here bro, it's swamp and river bottoms here...we just get wetter. It's the guys out west that get rain flooding. We don't worry about fresh water coming down, just salt water coming up.