Many of us have a love/hate relationship with rain. We love rain when there is none, and we hate it when we get it. The rain has been falling all day today, and I am wishing I could stop it. I've seen more water in and around Pea Ridge today than I've seen in quite some time. I used to have a favorite splash puddle over on Davis Street just north of Black Street. I could hit the puddle just right with the car and water would fly 20 feet into the air. It would also pressure wash the underside of my car. Then some time ago the Street Department reworked the drainage in that spot, and I have been doing without my splash puddle. Well, today it was back, my splash puddle that is, and I'm pretty sure I reached 25 feet with my splash spray. No, I don't hit it really fast, I just don't slow down for the water. I'm trying to do a service by splashing the water out of the street, you see!
Today's rainy weather also confirms the idea that in Arkansas we rarely have normal weather; we mostly have weird weather. We had a wet springtime and summertime this year, a drought in September and October, and now we've had soaker rains, followed by real flood-making downpours. Otter Creek today is quite a sight to see! The stream is out of its banks just about everywhere, and in places it looks more like a lake than a creek. Especially in the bottoms in the last mile before the Missouri line, there's water, water everywhere! It is muddy, too. I hate to see mud because it indicates that soil erosion is taking place over the watershed.
I haven't yet been out to see how Little Sugar Creek looks south of Pea Ridge. I'm guessing that it is not little right now. Even Little Sugar can get big now and then. Big Sugar Creek made the TV weather reports this afternoon. In high water times, Big Sugar often gets up to the bridge at Jacket, Mo., and floods the highway between Jacket and the bridge. Our Otter Creek carries the runoff water from Pea Ridge and all the area from the Military Park on the east to It'll Do Road on the west. With rainy weather covering the whole area, Otter Creek often overruns the low-water crossing on State Line Road, and the water flow there is a hundred yards wide. The creek then empties into Big Sugar Creek, making the huge flood even bigger. I would hate to see what Big Sugar looks like today around Powell, Mo. Big Sugar eventually empties into the Elk River over at Pineville, Mo., and enters Oklahoma and the Grand Lake area.
We always dreaded flooding like this when we lived on the farm. I never liked it that the high waters would move my fishing holes and my swimming pools on the creek. The fast-moving waters carry lots of gravel with them, and after the flood recedes you may have gravel bars that you didn't have before, your swimming hole may be filled in, and another deep water hole may be opened at another spot. I used to wonder how it would be to be a fish in the creek during high water. Even if the little fish could swim against the current fast enough to stay in the same spot, there would be no guarantee that his home would still be there. He might find his deep water home under the overhanging tree roots filled in with gravel, and his tree and its roots washed away.
Probably our biggest problem with floods on the creek was that they took out the water gates at both the south line and north line of our farm. Farmers having land with creeks running across are always trying to invent water gates that will endure the pressures of high water and still remain effective as property line fences after flooding recedes. The farmer may suspend gates from heavy steel cables; gates designed to ride the crest as water rises and to fall back into place as it recedes; but what often happens is that the flood picks up debris from the areas beside the normal stream bed, and carries the stuff downstream with the fast-moving waters. This may include large tree trunks and heavy fallen branches. Those become battering rams which even the finest and sturdiest water gates can not hold against. So, flooding often means that water gates have to be rebuilt. It creates urgent work which you often don't really have time for, but which has to be done anyway.
Another of the farm problems coming from heavy rains and runoff is erosion. Often the runoff waters want to create gullies, which carry away productive soil and make ugly gashes across the land. This may call for expensive concrete water passages or bringing in loads of stone to create hardened and resistant waterways to prevent the loss of soil to the runoff.
So, we who have farm experience usually like our rains slow and gentle. We love a slow soaker.
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Editor's note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is an award-winning columnist. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.
Editorial on 12/30/2015