Heck of a Storm

  We watched the opening salvos from the porch of the Olive Garden.  Got to the car during a break and listened to the downpour on the metal roof most of the night.  5.3 inches.  

  You could see it on the drive out to the lake to run the Coon War.  Washouts.  Downed limbs.  On Dean Road there was a car-killed Water Mocassin.  20 incher.  Reddish.  Another hundred yards a Red-Eared Slider (turtle) was crossing.  Two riparian reptiles.  What that means is the rain flooded them out or scoured their environment so that they were moving, trying to reorient themselves.  All the landmarks gone.  All the scent markers dissolved.

  Same scene in the woods.  Dead limbs and leaves down.  Tracking areas completely reset and blank.  I could hear Butler Creek roaring from up on the bluff.  Nothing in the trap.  The (Raccoons probably stayed in a hollow log all night.  They will be very hungry this evening.)  Catfood and corn washed away.  I rebaited and reset the deercam.  Nothing on the card. 

  A big storm like this disrupts the environment.  It was needed- the storms break the summer heat and dryness but also flood the burrows and blow out the washes and drainage.  Nobody eats so everyone is hungry this morning and foraging late.  Lots of displacement.  I'd hate to ride it out without shelter.

  Would love to know where the doe and her two fawns spent the night.

  Wind is still drifting out of the North.  I could see the ripples on the lake reversed from the usual this time of year.

  I worked my way down through the brush to the creek and found it out of the banks, 100 yards wide.  A line of frogs jumped in from the new waterline-far from their usual posts.  Fish are out of the channel and eating drowned worms.  Even the red harvester ants are digging out their meter-wide burrow.

  It doesn't seem like much to us in town- just pick up some twigs and sweep the sidewalk.  We don't have to water, but this is the storm of the summer.  Five inches of rain is MILLIONS of gallons of water over everything from the treetops to the bottom of the deepest molehole.  It's a Katrina-sized event if you are an Armadillo, Red Ant, frog, snake, fish or deer.

  When I was doing archeology- you could SEE a rain in the deep sand- its a several inch wet layer working its way down through the soil.

  Coming out I got bit by a fly who normally NEVER bites.  Everyone is reorienting.

  Fascinating to observe.