Flood

[melannen]

It's October First! And where I live we just got about 8 inches of rain in 24 hours. Which is a lot, for where I live.

I decided to go down to the creek to see how the floodwaters had changed it.

Here I am, walking on the path. Well, what was the path. The water never got over a foot deep, as long as you tested for shallow spots with a stick first, and I had some new galoshes to try out anyway...


Here's a higher spot on the path, probably about four feet above the current water level. It had about two-three inches of freshly laid sand ripples on it:


Eventually I got to where the path splits into a low road (along the creek) and a high road (along the top of the ridge.) The low road was just *gone*, someone's going to need to cut a new path there this winter. The high road was a swamp, and all the plants in it were covered in a thin coating of pale dry mud, so that it looked like it was full of ghost ferns:



Up near the bridge over the road, the floodwaters had formed massive vortices and eddies that cut potholes. Here's the deep almost crater-like hole (still with about a foot of water in it) that cuts through right where the trailhead was, with the bent vegetation all around it:


And the water had tried to undermine the road; near the guardrail's posts you could see dark markings that showed they had been dug out about two feet overnight:


Finally, just for fun! I am working on IDing my wild solanaceae (the family that includes everything from potatoes to tomatoes to peppers to eggplants to deadly nightshade.) This is a solanum that was growing around the bridge, my best guess is Silverleaf Nightshade, but with all the leaves gone in the flood I can't be sure.

Comments

[rydra_wong]

Oh, that nightshade is pretty. And looks amazingly like green tomatoes. I think that's the first time that I've really got the solanaceae as related.

[melannen]

Yeah, the reason I'm looking at them now is that earlier this summer I was on a nature walk and asked what the plant was with the little tiny fruit that looked like tomatoes, and the rangers said, "Deadly nightshade," and I was like, oh, of course, duh.

Since then I've started seeing solanum everywhere. I think the key is that almost all non-domesticated solanum seem to have fruit that really looks like tomatoes (in general form, luster, stem, calyx, ripening habts, if not color or size). They have all different kinds of leaves and growth habits but the fruit is distinctive, except for the families where the tomatoe-y fruit is hidden in a papery calyx (I haven't found any of those in the wild yet.)

[slippy]

8 inches per 24 hours seems like it would be a lot in most places, wow. And you live in a lovely area.

[melannen]

Actually, it turns out that it was something like 9".

We got hit with the remains of two tropical storms, stacked. Which is a lot of rain and wind, but nothing like the people south of us who got hit with them when they were *still* tropical storms.

[ysilme]

I love the green of the nightshade. So far, I've seen a non-vegetable solanum only with leaves and blossoms, never at a time where fruits might be there.

[melannen]

I never seem to *notice* solanum unless they have fruit on them, so I think you're one up on me!

[geeksdoitbetter]

~claps~

great after flood pics, thanks