Winter Creek

Backyard Winter Creek

Saturday, 1/03/15:

After 2.3" of rain overnight, more water than I've seen yet this winter is flowing through the little creek that runs at the back of our yard.

A little blue sky while on our afternoon walk.

Sky was overcast most of the day, but some blue shown through during our afternoon walk.

Temperature range:  51°/40°.    44° @ midnight.  .8" rain today.  2.8" rain for the month.

Summary:  Rain fell during the early morning ... overcast AM ... mostly cloudy to overcast PM ... light to moderate south wind ... laying/switching during evening.

To participate in Nature Notes and/or find links to more nature photos, please click the logo above.

.

Winter Creek

Creek in Broadwater Hollow

Creek dropping off a low rock shelf. (Photo by Jo)

(New Year's Day hike in Broadwater Hollow, Buffalo National River.)

.

Creek in Broadwater Hollow

Waterfall

Around four inches of rain earlier in the week has the winter creek below our house flowing.

.

Waterfall

Waterfall

Waterfall

The same waterfall as in the previous post, but this time flowing strong after almost two inches of rain instead of covered with icicles. Our temperature warmed so much after the deep freeze that an approaching cold front triggered thunderstorms complete with a little bit of hail -- just as if it was actually springtime already.

.

Waterfall

More Ice Photos

A few more photos from the early January deep freeze before moving on to something else. These photos were taken on January 8, 2010. This one shows a leaf encased in one of the ice flows on the bluffs below our house.

Icicles on the waterfall below our house. Unfortunately, our house is on the same level as the top of the waterfall so it cannot be seen from the house. We must climb down into the ravine to view.

Water seeping into the overhang behind the waterfall formed icicles too.

Water seeping out of the bluffs above the creek froze and formed its own icicles and ice flows.

But now all the ice is gone, except for a few of the largest ice flows along the bluff. During the first several days of thawing, I often heard icicles crashing down into the creek bed as they melted and came loose from the rocks.

Today is sunny and the temperature is predicted to climb up into the lower fifties. There are no below freezing temperatures in our immediate forecast.

.

More Ice Photos

Soggy But Okay

The little creek out back isn't back to normal, but quite a bit less water is moving through than this time yesterday. Actually, the water level fluctuated considerably during the day, depending upon how hard it was raining at the time. That little wet-weather creek drains a relatively small area so there isn't any danger of a wall of water roaring down the hillside. However, the area it drains is steep, so it responds quickly to changes in rainfall amounts. (I reckon all the leaves I complained about in an earlier post have gotten flushed out of the creek bed.)

Since this rainfall event began Monday evening, we've received a total of 10.4" (26 cm) of rain. More rain is in the forecast for today, but sunshine is promised for Thursday. The cold front that triggered all this rainfall has finally move through. Yesterday it was 58º (14ºC) and today it's only 38º (3ºC). Despite all the rain we received, the storms that brought the rain were relatively mild. There was little severe weather and only a couple of tornado warning in the state Monday evening.

Jo and I live up in the hills near the top of a ridge so there really isn't much chance of flooding. It's the towns down in the valleys -- often built along streams and rivers -- where rising water can be a problem. The only problem up here is flash flooding if you're out and trying to drive around. There are few bridges on the county roads and almost all creeks and streams are forded via low-water crossings. People anxious to get home (or someplace) forget you cannot drive through high, rushing water. It doesn't matter how many drive wheels you have. And, it's very difficult to judge exactly how high the water is until you drive off into it.

I hope all the folks to our north and east who received this weather system after it passed through our area are fairing as well as Jo and I. Right now, I just want the rain to stop so I can get outside and walk. I especially want to check out our road out. Hopefully, we won't need to have bulldozer work done before we can leave again.

(Note: Our telephone service survived all of Wednesday's rainfall, but our ISP drowned sometime during the day. They didn't get their servers bailed out until this morning.)

Soggy But Okay

Waterfall Icicles

Even though Saturday's temperature climbed into the mid-sixties, there was still a little bit of ice left on the water fall below the house.








Standing directly beneath the waterfall would have meant risking being impaled by a falling icicle -- not a good way to go.











From the inside (beneath the overhang) looking out.











Yes, I did try to get a photo of a falling water drop. No, I did not succeed. This is as close as I got.

Waterfall Icicles

Witch-Hazel

The First Flowers of the New Year

Witch-Hazel (Hamamelis vernalis)


One of the reasons Jo and I wanted to walk along the creek on Sunday was to see if the witch-hazel was blooming. It was.

The more common species of witch-hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) grows throughout eastern North America. It blooms in the late fall. Hamamelis vernalis is native to the Ozarks region. It blooms during the late winter and continues until early spring and is usually found in gravel or rocky stream beds or at the base of rocky slopes along streams. The flowers tend to be more reddish and have a spicy aroma.

Witch-hazel has many traditional uses. It was the wood of choice for "dowsing" -- finding underground water (or sometimes other valuable objects) using a Y-shaped branch. Extracts from the leaves, twigs, and bark were used to reduce inflammation, stop bleeding, and check secretions of the mucous membranes. Astringent skin care products made from American witch-hazel are still available from Dickinson's.

Although I will probably never be at the right place at the right time, I'd really like to witness witch-hazel seed dispersal. Over the next year after blooming, two shiny black seeds develop in a woody capsule. The capsules mature at about the time the following year's flowers open. Then, the capsules split so explosively that they eject the seeds up to twenty-five feet away from the mother plant.

Witch-Hazel

Along The Winter Creek

Sunday afternoon Jo and I and the dogs decided not to walk our normal route and walk along the winter creek that runs through our place instead. (The dogs certainly didn't object. Rusty and Bucket are always ready to go and don't really care where.) Walking the creek is more like exploring. You cannot manage anything close to a walking pace because of the steep sides and all the rocks and boulders strewn about.





The creek should be flowing this time of year, but we haven't received enough rain this year. There were just a few pools of water scattered along the way. There were also "pools" of loose, dry leaves where the water should have been. These leaf pools made walking even more treacherous. A few of the larger ones were waist deep. A pool of water you can see, but when you step off into a pool of leaves, you think you're stepping onto firm ground, but step off into nothingness instead. Both Jo and I fell several time. Fortunately, there were no hidden rocks where we fell and the leaves provided a soft landing. We completely lost sight of Rusty when he unknowingly jumped off into one of the deeper leaf pools. He quickly dog paddled to the surface and swam onto firm ground.

Along The Winter Creek