The Rain Report: We Got Wet...

After the rip-off of rain (we got a full smidgen yesterday), the aftermath of Hurricane Dolly made some impact on our area in San Antonio this afternoon, so the grass is green, the aquifer is up, and I got some pictures to show!My wife snapped a few of our back porch as the rain was coming down hard. You can see it begin to pool a little on the tile.

There was a tornado making its way from the Sea World area right over us and into Helotes, so she and the dog were pretty skeered as I sat comfortably in the basement floor of a hardened facility, sipping coffee and watching the weather radar. I may have mentioned it before, but the number one Google search term that brings visitors to this blog is "Jennifer Broome's Breasts". She is the local weather lady, and I guess she is good at it. 40,000 hits and still going strong!Anyway, by the time I got off work, the rain had pretty much died down, so it was safe for me to take a few pictures of the Greenbelt area, just as a follow-up to my recent report on the area. One local visitor to the blog has made some very solid comments about the state of the greenbelt and I'm sure he'd be kind enough to chime in as he deems necessary to help describe what happens when an otherwise dry creek bed gets wet.The first thing you might note is that, yes, it is full of water, but really, it doesn't have a flooded look to it. In fact, if you didn't know any better, this could be the normal state of things and it would look pretty nice, at least I think.This little place caught me completely by surprise. I was on the opposite side the last time I walked through the greenbelt and did not even notice this little work of art. This is at the end of a cul de sac where it appears that the neighbors on either side of the drainage into the greenbelt built a nice bridge and have done some awesome landscaping. Nice work folks. It really does make the cul de sac an inviting place to live I'm sure, but the huge cactus garden probably keeps kids from using the area as a short cut. Who knows?
Here is where we see some leftover brush from the recent trimming. Some people have this idea that the brush will be sent flowing down the dry creek bed and "naturally" become someone else's problem each time it rains. I'm sure this was not a flash flood of biblical proportions, but I think it was enough to demonstrate that the "let nature haul the limbs away" theory is not a good one.
This is where the Silver Creek portion of the greenbelt picks up at Tezel Road. You'll note the large drainage ditch (suitable for your graffiti needs) is not really flowing that much. Just an hour earlier, I suspect the water coming out of there looked like white rapids. When we get a serious downpour, the water shoots through this area pretty good and so any trash that has been tossed into the center of the ditch ends up stuck to trees and brush in our greenbelt. If we can limit the brush, (and maybe not litter), the flow will be enough to keep the trash going all the way to The Gulf of Mexico! Okay, maybe not.
And of course, I very highly suspect that the cardboard 12-pack container stuck in the tree (the picture on the left shows it from a distance) did not come from today's rains. Nor do I suspect the graffiti painted in the tree came from the strom either. In the end, the water flow through the green belt and the last set of pictures are taken from the opposite end at Timberwilde near the Lodge of the Great Northwest. Interestingly enough, I received an e-mail from a person looking to purchase a home just beyond where these pictures were taken (behind Oscar Perez Memorial Park), and they were worried about flooding. I'd say you can see that it is pretty tame. Of course, we have had much higher waters, but really, I'm not aware of any homes being flooded as a result.

So there you have it. Our greenbelt all wet.