April flood

Wed. 17 April, storm clouds moving in over farm. Notice our bull and ram are across the fence on the stream side along with 4 other cows.

Thu. 18 April, about mid-morning after the all-night rain stopped. Got over 3 inches. Pond overflowed (to the left in photo) adding to the new stream in middle of paddock. You can see the stream in back ground. 

Our stream over flowed into paddocks 3 and 4, so forcefully that it washed out the barbed wire fence between the two.

The bridge over our stream was totally covered, and this photo was taken an hour after the rain stopped, so the water is already receding. 

The new river through our pasture.

We usually call this the "dry gully" in paddock 6, but it was really flowing on this day. 

The water was so strong going through paddock 4, it flattened the fence between our farm and our next door neighbor, and crept up into paddock 5.

Our stream bed on other side of our neighbor is normally on the far side of the power pole., but as you can see, it is mostly on this side of pole and has completely covered the fields, road and intersection.

K8 had to move the sheep because the fences in paddocks 3 and 4 were down in three places.

The stream to the left is level with the field.

K8 is standing on the edge of stream bank an hour after the rain stopped. You can see the fence flattened to the right.

You can barely see it, but there is a fish (in center left) swimming across our field. Hope it made its way back to stream.

Water finally receding. We'll be bull dozing all the rocks across the stream into this "bend" to re-open the old stream channel and straighten out the stream bed, and hopefully minimize this problem in future.

Looks like we are going to need stronger fence posts.

Our stream turned into quite a raging river.

After the water level dropped, I allowed K6 and K8 into the stream for some fun.

K6 had to help K8 at one point. The current was still fairly strong.

A view looking back toward our bridge. The water has dropped at least 3 or 4 feet by this time. Because the surge "broke" both fences across the stream, I had to move our bull and 5 other animals down the road and across this bridge - in the dark with a flashlight - and back into securely fenced paddock 1. Exciting to say the least, but "Red" is a well behaved bull - he'll do anything for food!