Yesterday on my weekly escapade to WalMart, my path was blocked. Not by a car wreck. Not by a herd of cows. Not by construction.
The dam at the lake was overflowing. The road below the dam was washed out. Unpassable.
30 days ago the lake was 8.6% FULL. Now it was overflowing.
You would have thought every resident in West Texas had won the lottery.
Can you believe the rain?
I told Katie it’s been dry so much the past two years, now people will probably start praying for it to stop raining.
We don’t live on a huge lake, but it’s not tiny either. 2,400 acres to be exact. The deepest point is 47 feet.
But for the past two years we have watched the lake go down. And down. And down. It was so dry the town was on the national news.
Emergency plans were put in place to provide a nearby town drinking water. A $6M desalination plant was approved to filter water from a nearby river.
Every resident said the same thing:
I’ve never seen the lake this low.
Most of the residents are over sixty and have lived out here for a long time. When they say never, I believe them.
Then the weather did an 180.
30 days ago – the rains finally came.
And they came.
And they came.
Two years ago we had our dock moved on an extra 20’ so we would be able to use our boat longer if the lake level went down. While it sounded like a good idea at the time, nobody expected the lake level to go down as much as it did.
Here’s what our dock looked like on the ground last fall. I took out a kayak to an island that had shown up in the middle of the lake. The water should be 15’ (or more) above my head. Crazy!
In the Spring, we had a big flock of pelicans show up. How cool! They hung around for about three or four weeks enjoying the new island. An island I named Pelican Island!
Pelican Island is now twenty feet below water. We won’t see the pelicans again next year.
The dock that sat on the ground for two years is now floating.
Summer is back on.
Boating is back on.
Wakeboarding with a boat load full of friends is back on.
Marshmallows around the bonfire at night is back on.
Now it’s time to start complaining about how hot it is again.
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