Storm Damage

As soon as people pulled themselves out from underneath their nice warm blankets this morning, they began venturing out to see what, if any, damage had been done from last night's storms. As it turns out, a great deal of damage was done. Abigayle and I picked up my mom and Grandma so that we could all enjoy the ride around town and the countryside.

One of the first things that we noticed was all of the swiftly moving water in many gutters. In a lot of the cases, the water was still over the tops of the curbs and extended out across the streets. A lot of waste from yards was left behind in the streets after the flooding had gone down. In some cases, the City of Leoti Department had had to barricate complete streets because of water that covered entire streets and was also standing in yards.

Leoti has two reservoirs that are used to store any excess rainwater. The smaller one is located a couple of blocks west of the Old City Park. Though it is not nearly as deep as the reservoir on the east edge of town, the water had flooded completely over its boundaries and was still crossing a couple of nearby streets. To make matters worse, more water in gutters was headed straight for this flooded reservoir.

But as we headed to the main reservoir east of town, we were shocked at what we saw. Yesterday afternoon, we had driven to this reservoir. We could barely see any water in it. Today, the pond is completely full and is flooding everywhere. The drainage ditches that hold the water as it moves towards this water storage unit were overflowing. My grandma has lived in Leoti for almost 90 years. She made many comments about how she had never seen flooding like this in Leoti! The water was clear over the reservoir's banks. Totally amazing.

We found ourselves agreeing that a dangerous twister must have cozied up to the southern edge of town. Large trees and bushes were twisted right out of the ground and strewn around the neighborhood. One of our relatives lost many VERY large branches. Though broken branches were seen all over town, they seemed to be more plentiful in the southern edge of town. The City crew is out right now gathering this debris and hauling it off to the sanitary landfill. In some cases, only dead branches and trees were broken and uprooted but in most of the cases that we saw, the damage had been done to trees and shrubs that were gorgeous just yesterday. That is the sad fact of this storm.

My grandma wanted me to drive down her alley so that we could see if her backyard had sustained any damage. Though I tried to do this, we were stopped by a 15-20 foot piece of 6 foot tall wooden fencing that had been torn from the rest of the fence and strewn into the alley. Throughout the morning, we found other torn up fences around town.

This water came in quickly and furiously. In some cases, it ended up in basements. Crews from Garden City, etc had to be brought in to suck the water out of homes. That is definitely one of those things that normally does not happen in Leoti!

Then we headed towards the White Woman Creek south of Leoti. We were shocked when we arrived at the area just to the north of the creek and could see rapidly moving deep waters coarsing through the normally dry creek. It was so deep and moving so quickly that there were actually white caps on the water! All around the creek, we noticed a bunch of water in the fields. Some of the water was headed straight for the creek. Other water was located on flat land so it was just staying in place. The White Woman ends just to the south of Scott City which is 24 miles east of Leoti. I've been told that water is this deep all along the way.

Many wheat farmers around here have already planted next year's wheat crop. Some of the wheat was already a few inches tall. This moisture will be FANTASTIC for it! Some farmers think that their weed seed has been washed away. That could definitely be the case but the wheat that has already sprouted should be much better than other wheat crops that we have had during the longlasting drought that we have endured for the past several years. In some cases, farmers will be forced to go in after the water has drained off and re-till it and then re-plant their seed. Of course, not many people would be happy to have to do this but the good news is that now our fields will have some wonderful wet subsoil which crops need in order to really do well.

After checking out the area south of town, we headed north to the Caprock area. We came upon a stretch of road just a few miles out that the State was having to stand guard. The water was still over half of the highway. We could see where they had brought in equipment to remove a great portion of mud from a ditch so that the excess water could drain away from the highway. Northern fields looked more like lakes in many areas. It was difficult to believe that at the beginning of this week, Wichita County was under a Fire Storm Watch and Warning. LOL!!!

Once we were back in town, we headed east to Marienthal. Marienthal had not gotten much rain in Thursday evening's storms. They made up for it last night! Water was everywhere. I can't imagine that many people were complaining though. It is just wonderful to have such a great quantity of moisture in our county!

We have not had any more rain since during the night. We still have good chances of rain tonight and tomorrow. Who knows? We may end up having 7 or more inches by the end of the weekend!

All that I can say is that God has definitely blessed us with some glorious water. All of us who have been complaining of dry conditions should be thanking God for His blessings.

VLE-B