For Our Texas Friends

Im in the Denton area of DFW. Still more rain on the way here in the next few minutes. Just a quick look at the radar here.

www.facebook.com...



Hopefully this is the last of the rain we get for awhile. Sunday should be dry, and they're forecasting the rest of the week to be dry to. Then again, it is Texas, and I wont be surprised if more just so happens to pop up in the next few days.

That is very kind of you- thank you for thinking of us. (hugs back!)
I am in Denton County near Little Elm. The rain has been unreal. It is pouring now as we speak. Most of us do have power. Last night the lakes were about as full as they can get without starting to release water uncontrollably. They did a news conference warning that it they were releasing more water from Ray Roberts to try and keep it from going over the emergency spillway (never happened before) We are a (little) high and still dry too.
Things could get really hairy in our neighborhood in the next few hours though. Many of the low lying bridges and roads are covered but so far the town is mostly functional.
There have been many tragedies in the state..I too am very concerned over the wildlife as well. It's Mother Nature.. whom we love, but I would like her to move these rain clouds along. I am on standby to trailer horses out if need be. It's crazy. Like skunkape says-- we will do the best we can with it.
Lake Ray Roberts is approx 29,350 acres and rose a foot in 1 hour yesterday!
Lake Lewisville is 29,000 acres. I have never seen them full, we are usually several feet under.
a simple chart showing levels

My wife is from Texas so we have lots of friends and family there.

I heard last night that there is enough water on the ground right now to cover the entire state in 8 inches of water.
That is an incredible amount!

Stay safe everyone!

We have not heard from our friends there,
so it is good to hear from others who live there to kind of get an idea of what is going on.

Ya'll are in my prayers!

That is sweet of you, thank you for the support. I'm in North Texas, just west of Denton and it hasn't been terrible up here but it's been pretty bad down south. Saw this video on San Antonio News 4's Facebook that really shows just how extreme it's been. There are some crazy facts here:

www.facebook.com...

I appreciate the well wishes from all.

My little town got flooded a couple of weeks back, so I left and drove to Port Aransas, where it flooded for two of the three days that I was there. So I drove up to Llano, Tx, where the river came down twenty-something feet, so I came back home. It's raining here now.

I know that lives and homes and vehicles have been lost. I have family from one end of Texas to another, and to my knowledge all have been okay. My best wishes go out to those adversely affected by the weather.

But I gotta say. This is the closest thing I've seen to spring in the better part of a this century. It is an old version of normal that hasn't been here since before I started driving. We gotta take the bad with the good.

The good is I can't recall driving from my place (near the New Mexico border) all the way to the coast, and seeing so much green. Green and wet. When you get around the hill country, the Black-eyed Susans and Indian Blankets start at the edge of the roads and just expand all the way up the hillsides. Texas is being renewed.

It will make for a beautiful summer. We will have lakes to go to that don't look like they are dying. No more stench of stagnated water. The duck-weed will be swept from the river-beds. The fish will swim further upstream than they have been able to in quite a while.

I have yet to complain as collectively, Texas has been hoping and praying for rain for a very long time now.

Again, thanks to all for the well wishes.


Boba

Good to hear from you Texans this morning! Switched on the news as soon as I woke up this morning, and didn't see any news of Tornados touching down, so I was so thankful for that.

Looks like a real area of concern today is Dallas. There's a tempest there, 55 degrees with wind gusts up to 50 mph. Storms with the rain, and lightening according to the weather channel. In other words the rain is cold, and the ground is completely saturated. Stay safe Dallas.

And whats up with the reports of toxins in the water, alligators and snakes? I just caught a blip of that and didn't understand where the toxins are coming from. Snakes I know about.

a reply to: Bobaganoosh
That's a brighter part of the story, which in the long run will be a good thing. Just sorry everyone has to be put through all this scary weather and tragedy to get there.

An official from Wichita Falls commented that their previously empty, dust-bowl reservoirs are now full, and he believes there will be enough water for the next 15-17 years. Film showed water pouring over the spillway, as compared to last year when you could walk up it. So, big change. (Aww, he seemed so proud of the water, and was talking about how they were going to care for it, and place restrictions on it too).

It looks like after the weekend, it's over? Heading east. God help New Orleans if it does.

a reply to: ladyinwaiting

Depending on the area, mainly agricultural, flood waters can be toxic due to the runoff. When I was growing up, we had a rule. We never swam in the river until a week or so after the flood.

Stagnate pools, road residue, agricultural chemicals, oil and gas crud, all of these things just sit and wait to be washed off. The longer we go without a good washing, the more it builds up. When something like this happens, well, you get the idea. That is tons and tons of nasty stuff and it has nowhere to go except for the river basins and lakes.

Generally speaking, the toxicity doesn't last long. Nature has a way of filtering these things out.

a reply to: ladyinwaiting

My sister lives in Texas - in the area that almost had their dam burst the other day. They were lucky - others have had it so much worse

What a nightmare

Texas is a big place - hard to comprehend how much territory this affects

Nice thread Lady - I've been very focused on this as you can imagine. She just texted me to tell me It rained again this morning. It was funny back when it started - before the floods. She doesn't use smileys anymore

I live on the Texas / New Mexico border. We've had rain just about every day since April 11th. It's very muddy out here. We had a funnel cloud cruise over our house last night with so much lightning it was like a massive strobe light. However, the silver lining is that the prairie is waking up. Incredible display of wildflowers and green grass in what is usually a brown and dusty landscape. Very heavy humidity up this way which is quite unusual for our deserty location. Fortunately we are not in danger of flooding, but when I see the other cities in Texas getting hit hard with tornadoes and floods it weighs heavy on my heart.

When it rains, it pours. They say never complain about a west Texas rain, but well.....we're all really sick of it. I believe we're fixing to see the end of this in the next week.

It has rained at my house for 18 straight days! I'm not talking about some sprinkles here and there...I am talking about bust down the door deluges...daily. My garden vegetables are through and my tobacco plants are still indoors under grow lights. It's crazy...

SallieSunshine -- Mosquitoes as far as I'm concerned can join the fleas and ticks in insect hell. I hope all the frogs are so hungry from all that frenzied mating, the eat them all! And their evil larvae.

Neysa Cow-nado! You might have just titled the next big Hollywood sci-fi film. I wonder if y'all are out fishing on the driveway today. Watch for snakes!

Amilia When we had a tornado cut a path through my state, (and town -- around 300 people were killed) rebuilding would have been so much more difficult without those federal dollars. Thank goodness for that.

Skunk Its refreshing to hear everybody is behaving themselves, and glad you are okay. Please stay that way. : )

BlessedLore Hang in there. Patience, time, money.

hotinTexas Hearing about the animals and old trees is distressing. It's nice to know there is a plan to deal with them, ya know? Sometimes our animals are forgotten in such a crisis. Sounds like Texas has it's bases covered.

buni But things are looking better for Denton today, I hope?

Starcrossd Interesting chart. A foot in an hour. Wow.

Spira My friend it is a nightmare. So glad the dam held, though. That would have taken the nightmare to a completely different level.

Stay safe everybody. Keep us posted.

My prayers go out to everyone in Texas and especially to all the cattle ranchers. I hope the animals make it out OK

originally posted by: FissionSurplus

They say never complain about a west Texas rain, but well.....we're all really sick of it. I believe we're fixing to see the end of this in the next week.

It should be "Never Curse the Rain" ... (at least in texas).

Quite honestly, these rains are reminding me of the Mid-1960s-Era-Weather.

I'm starting to see some Playa-Lakes ... (and there were even more back then).

I'm seeing turtles crossing the roads like I haven't seen for many years.

What I haven't seen yet are frogs and tad-poles turning puddles black.

-
OPINION: ...

These are the weathers we should be having ... (fearlessly

).

BUT

The disasters everyone is seeing in the news-n-Texas is due to higher population that has built in areas forgotten to become Wet-n-Flooded.

( and comparing back to the 60s, it's possible to become wetter ).
.

a reply to: ladyinwaiting

As someone with family there, appreciated! Mine is safe so far, but you never know.

I'm in the Austin area. A week ago i almost got stranded at an intersection that the smart people were not attempting to cross. But i did, and made it through. Was fun drive trying to navigate to my parents house with more than 200 roads blocked off by cones or police. Luckily our town missed the rain today. Beautiful sunset earlier.

a reply to: wastedown

Hey there now, I'm in Denton also

I'm just west of Houston. Watching the news now - the Brazos river is at 49 feet. We drove around yesterday to check on it. Its almost up to the IH 10 bridge between Katy & Sealy. We are above flooding in our neighborhood.

Drove by a house yesterday and the people had a car parked on the road side of their property and a small boat so they could get to the other side of the driveway.

I apologize for hijacking now but also keep OK in your prayers. They have been hit hard as well. Lots of flooding there too mixed with the tornadoes. I know we have lots of Okies on ATS as well.

SHOUT-OUT to OKLAHOMA

I guess the media frenzy started when Houston got hit so hard, because it's a major US city. It does seem like the news folks, as an aside would say "and Oklahoma", so it hasn't been as highly publicized.

But Oklahomans, do know that we are concerned about you too, and certainly don't minimize the hardships this flooding has brought you. I know you've had some deaths from this as well as property damage and future cases of PTSD. Please stay safe and know we want to hear from you.

Thank you TXTriker for saying it.

Stay Safe Oklahoma!

Far West Side of Houston here - we made it through without being flooded, though many streets around us flooded for a day or so. Some of the additional falling rain caused some flash flooding.

The North and East sides of Houston seemed to get it worse.

It was pretty bad. We lost power a number of times, we could hear the rain and hail falling hard. We had to rescue a stray mamma cat and her kittens because it was so wet and the wind blowing was so strong.

I've never seen so much rain here before. It's a shame we can't seen a few days of it to California

Hope everyone else made it through okay.

All y'all in OK - good luck too, you'll be in our thoughts.