The Scalzi River is Back
Posted on July 7, 2003 Posted by John Scalzi 3 Comments
We’ve been having a mess of rain here the last few days — two massive thunderstorms in the last four hours alone, including one that knocked off the power for a few minutes — and the oversaturation of the ground means that the Scalzi River has made a return appearance. The Scalzi River shows up when the creek that runs parallel to my property line overflows and skips off its track. When that happens the excess water curls around my property and heads toward the larger Harris Creek across the road by way of a drainage ditch at the front of my property. The picture above is the Scalzi River at its headwaters: This area is normally dry. You’ll note that Krissy’s garden is in danger of getting swamped. Below is a shot of the river as it heads toward the edge of the property, the better to swamp my neighbors’ access road:
The good news is that barring any additional rain, the Scalzi river will drain itself out in the space of a few hours. The bad news is that more rain is coming. It’s going to be a very long, squishy week.
Fortunately for you, it’s only the Scalzi River, and not the Scalzi Lake.
I get Lake Bowler from time to time (our yard is the low point of the block), and the worst ever Lake Bowler was when my neighbor decided to empty his entire above-ground pool into my yard one summer. Three inches of standing water = no grass left when it finally all drains off.
Fortunately, I’m moving come August.
I am officially envious of you–you have slightly more lawn than I do.
One of neighbors used to get a temporary river, because of a more or less intentional drainage ditch across his back yard. He wasn’t too thrilled when the brain-dead neighbor (no, not me) put in a dam in the form of a 30-foot long 4-foot wide aboveground flower bed. That is when the temporary-river became the much-less-temporary reservoir.
Most of his backyard has standing water if we got serious rain.