The Flood Riders

Amateur meteorology, online gauges, and homegrown forecasting models

Phone calls, logistics, live-feed precip updates on the hour.  

Expectation…then once the rain leaves the basin,

Speculation.

“It’s going big tomorrow.”

“How big do you think? And when you think we’ll see the peak? Daybreak?”

“What about the feeder creeks coming down from the mountains? They’re primed sure, but they got half an inch less rain and support twice the vegetation”

Like we’re fucking hydrogeology doctorates or something.

Can’t even sleep until you see the uppermost gauge twitch,

knowing that somewhere deep within the hills a sleeping Giant stirs.

Race down there.  Gear loaded, boats strapped.  

River rising more than a foot an hour.

Prelims look good: ditches full, drainages roaring, USGS gage still rising

First glimpse of the headwaters and it’s unrecognizable.  

Out-of-its-banks high, wide, brown, powerful. Indiscriminate.  

Slightly nervous now, remembering my last encounter

Have I seen it this high before?

No, probably 2 feet higher today.

The bridge is under, the lot is under, the old dam nearly is.

Low booms and tectonic rumbles from somewhere out of sight.
Reverberations through the hull.

I am unfamiliar with this Giant.

One last shiver, and I shove off.

Life comes into focus.

Water not read so much as felt

Strokes intuitive, automatic

Life and death might be two feet apart,

but that doesn’t matter the slightest.

You pierce the seam between them,

A thousand lives lived in the moment.

I am one of the flood riders.

We don’t conquer the Giant,

Don’t ask favors of it.

We simply join in the wild anarchy of its descent,

And in the severity of its beauty.  

 Chuck McHenry, king of the Flood Riders.  Saint Francis River (10' over); Photo by John Niebling