The BIG ONE

 

The BIG ONE is the one I never want to get.  I watched it from town on radar. It concerned me because it's the first time I had seen the center of a bad cell directly over the oasis since I've been watching radar. The last, and only, BIG ONE since the oasis was created, was in the year 2000. It overran the dike around the oasis, washing some of the dike away. After that, my late husband raised the dike. It never breached again.

Yesterday, the BIG ONE went over the dike. It didn't breach it, but cut into it badly (above photo). When I first arrived at the oasis late this afternoon and saw the devastation, my first inclination was to just give up. Nature won. But then I made myself focus on what was left. My cup half full, not half empty, so to speak.

A BIG ONE inundates the whole oasis, takes away all the mulch, washes random places away, piles silt in other places, and leaves debris everywhere. In 2000 it flooded the potty shed with about a foot of water. We raised it a foot after that. Yesterday it flooded it again, although just a couple of inches. When the water recedes, it leaves a thick coating of mud inside. So much to do and so little energy. But I have time, so I'll do it bit by bit. What made it worse was that when it hit, all the tanks were already full and the ground was already saturated. No place for the water to go. 

I guess the road is the biggest concern. Right now only high clearance is doable. I'm going to try to hire someone to work on it. The problem is, what's left is basically rock. It needs padding, not grading. But I'll address it as a challenge, not a problem. We'll see. It's not over til it's over.