Hi Folks....maybe you've heard the latest news on NPR about the Missouri River rising....I didn't hear it, but I am looking at it this very moment. Remember my post from earlier in the month (available
here) about getting tons of rock put along our banks? How we thought we were secure after that? We didn't know then just how much water was going to get released from the dams up the river....it's a lot...so much so that they are evacuating some areas in our vicinity. I live in a very tiny community of homes on river and now we've agreed as a group that we need to get rock all the way to the top at each and every homesite...and we need to protect the one small road into and out of our community. We are so fortunate that the barge and crew are still here in our area and so....here we go again, more rock, more rock, more rock, with fingers crossed and holding hope that the waters don't go over the banks. Well, actually what would probably happen is not that the waters would rise over our banks and we'd flood, they would just erode the banks and the water would take the houses away. The very low lying areas of Nebraska, at least straight across from us on this section of the river, will most certainly flood. This is all a nightmare scenario, but increasingly a very real one, as I've learned today that there are 700 National Guard troops in Vermillion (which is our "town" about 8 miles away, safely located up a huge bluff and I'm sure in no danger) to assist folks in low lying areas up river and down river from us....I believe there are evacuations going on, not to mention lots and lots of sandbagging. I think we're okay, since we are pretty high up on the banks, but many folks are not so well located. There are still heavy rains and winter snowmelt from the west creating uncertainty as to what will actually happen all along the Missouri, but we're going to do what we can do, which is pay to get rock on those banks as fast as possible. Last I knew, the water levels released from the dam in Yankton were going to be at their peak by the middle of the month....I can already see that a lot of the rock we had put on our banks earlier in the month is underwater. The water levels raise a bit each day.
I'm very weary of the strange weather patterns and havoc they wreak on so many folks....here we've had a lot of rain, wind and cold. Now that I have a new supply of Japanese paper, I can make these little drawings again....here's what I long for....the hot summer sun.
Hope you all have a great week....see you later in the week....heading to the studio to see if I can make something happen!
