I don't know if many other people were on line in the station after Carl left right after noon, but I could not get on line there--so I was not able to post before he did.
After the sun began to give light yesterday, I found that we were in the midst of falling snow (east of Fort Collins), and it continued to snow until we had passed through the Moffat Tunnel--and found the trees west of the summit covered with snow. It was raining in Grand Junction.
The UP held us at Kremmling (where I saw a bunch of new CP bungalows, labeled for their locations). I did not time how long we were held (for a EB BNSF and an EB UP), but we were over an hour late at Glenwood Springs and at Grand Junction--and only ten minutes late into Salt Lake City. So far as I know, we had no trouble with snow on the track.
Back to my abode at midnight, and so to bed after unpacking that which was needed.
Other residents seemed glad to see me st breakfast and at lunch, and were patient with me as I described some of my travels.
Johnny
The only possible worrisome point of my trip came at Fredericksburg, Virginia, where I boarded to get back to Washington after visiting a cousin and her husband, who live in King George. The station there is keyed more to VRE. The tracks are elevated above the street, and the platforms have no cross connection except by going down, under, and back up. The other people boarding were expecting our train to come in on track 3--and it came in on track 2 (no track 1 there)--and everybody had to go down, under and up as the train approached. Had my cousin and husband not been with me, I would have missed the train since I am not able to move as fast as I formerly was. My cousin hastened, and the train was held for me. She sent me a note, telling me that she has complained to Amtrak (of course, it was the CSX DS that put the train on the wrong track for people waiting to go north).
I was reminded of what dispatchers on one road (C&EI?) did soon after CTC was installed--they played with moving trains from one track to the other, to the irritation of people using the trains to go to work,
afternoon
yardwork was done after church.Swamp has dried up.We filled in some tree stump spots to level the yard.Young girls at park found a dollar.Each one wanted it.I said well there are 4 of you.How about you each get a quarter.They went back home as they continued to squabble.They came back to the park with nothing.Parent was tired of the squabble so they got nothing.Back to school and work tomorrow.
stay safe
Joe
Deshler Ohio-crossroads of the B&O Matt eats your fries.YUM! Clinton st viaduct undefeated against too tall trucks!!!(voted to be called the "Clinton St. can opener").
Hey MC,
You get dug out yet?
Norm
Norm, I have no idea how it was at MC's house, but I saw little accumulation where I was when passing through Denver yesterday morning.; the weather guessers apparently guessed wrong.
It was still raining in Grand Junction in the afternoon, but there was no precipitation when I arrived at the Crossroads of the West.
Norm: Dug out 20"....Already melted off about a third of it. North side of town where Johnny wobbled through got about 2/3rds of what we got down south. Eastern 1/3 of Colorado saw 2+ inches of rain (and a tornado near Eads) Flooding will be the next issue (gutters already running full). The moisture will quit after Tuesday, but the bulk of it is done.
When the snow finally melts, I can bale the front and back yards. This year's winter wheat crop oughta be a whopper.
The sun was out here. Temp hit +70F today.
Folks are forgetting there's a statewide burn ban on. "I'll just light a little fire - no one will notice..."
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
Anybody heard how Houston Ed is doing down in the swamp? Are the gators at the door?
He may wander in w/details. Said he got the undercarriage of his Jeep washed thoroughly.
She who has no signature! cinscocom-tmw
evening
Ns had a westbound in the siding when I left work.Cars decided to jump the track for CSX in Fostoria.Train was reporterd to be a whopper.Going to clog things up for a bit.Need to get cleaned up.
This is White Oak Bayou, about 3 blocks from home.
Under normal circumstances, the water is about 35 to 40 feet below the 43rd street bridge, but after getting a foot of rain in 12 hours....
And if you have big fat mud tires on your small 20 year old Jeep Wrangler....they can float! (not really, but it felt like it a few times!)
And if you have big fat mud tires on your small 20 year old Jeep Wrangler....they can float!
(not really, but it felt like it a few times!)
23 17 46 11
Yup!
Same bridge, 24 hours later.
work busy.Ns dropped off some cars in the siding.Weather cooler but still nice.Rain coming thursday according to the guessers. Chores to do.
That's interesting, Ed. Seriously, if Houston is that low to begin with, where does the water go, and why doesn't it get there faster? Is the bayou tidal at that point?We're supposed to get some wet weather from the Gulf tomorrow afternoon here; I hope we can beat it to Michigan. We're making a quick trip up to celebrate my mother's birthday (she's 92 tomorrow). I'm hoping to see some freight action on the way up; on the way back we might be in the rain.One piece of our trip fell into place today: it is no problem at all to put Tehachapi on our route...Cajon will be sacrificed. I'm thinking overnight.
Carl
Railroader Emeritus (practiced railroading for 46 years--and in 2010 I finally got it right!)
CAACSCOCOM--I don't want to behave improperly, so I just won't behave at all. (SM)
Carl,
Most of the drainage is through the major bayous...Buffalo bayou, Greens, White Oak and Brays Bayou and the San Jacinto and Trinity rivers.
Think of huge deep channels, most of which has been concreted in like the LA River.
Everything empties into either the Buffaloe Bayou, Trinity river or the San Jacinto river, then into Galveston bay, then the gulf of Mexico, all gravity fed.
All the smaller creeks feed into these bayous.
The San Jac, and Buffalo Bayou are tidal to a point, the San jac is also the release river for Lake Conroe to the north.
On the west side of Houston is Addicks, a huge several square mile catch basin run by the Army Corp of Engineers, it is released into Buffaloe Bayou as needed...by the way, Buffalo Bayon becomes the Houston Ship Channel right across the street form North Yard, where I work.
The biggest probles is IH10...when built, the designers decided to save on having to build all the cross streets overpasses as arched road bridges to clear the highway, instead they took IH 10 below grade, in essence it is a big ditch from the west side to the east side of Houston, this allowed the cross street bridges to be built flat and level.
It has a pump system, but that system was never designed to handle this much water this fast.
The two major bayous, Buffalo and White Oak, converge at Allens Landing, the begining of Houston so to speak, just north of downtown, and IH 10 also crosses these two at the same place, so when you see the photos on the news of downtown with what looks like a lake next to it, thats what you are looking at!
The real rub are the uneducated drivers...if you live here more than a year or two, you should know where it floods, and if the flood gauge on the overpass you are about to drive under says there is 6 feet of water on the road, and your car is four feet tall....well, like the comedian Ron White says, "you can't fix stupid!"
Of the 6 deaths this time, all six drove into seroiusly deep water, one actually drove around the city trucks blocking the road....can't imagine anyone being in that big a hurry, but it happens every time.
Ed-Can you explain bayous as they pertain to Houston? Us northern, flatlanders probably have an entirely different image in our minds. The image that conjures up is a big, dark swamp with overhanging mossy trees and alligators everywhere. On the soundtrack would be the sounds of crickets, gators and, for some inexplicable reason, jackass birds. Houston bayous, I imagine, are somewhat different?
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
Actually Houston owes it existance to those bayous flooding like that.
In the 1800's the Harrris brothers were trying to convince the US government to dredge Buffalo Bayou to make a ship channel. Buffalo Bayou was a glorified ditch, but they had a thunderstorm right before the government men showed up, the bayou flooded and the government men thought it would be big enough to use as a navigable waterway (not relizing it was at flood stage).
Prior to that Galveston was the big city on the Gulf coast.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
After tracing one of them for several miles, I conclude that they are no different than "creeks" up north here - until you get down to sea level, they are simply natural drainage.
We have the same phenomenon along Lake Ontario with swamps and marshes along the shoreline outlets of said creeks.
I think of bayous generally as rivers without a regular current flowing. They are formed when rivers change course leaving the abandoned river beds with water sitting in them. Unless there is a lot of rain or strong winds there is usually no current flowing in them.
_____________
"A stranger's just a friend you ain't met yet." --- Dave Gardner
nice weather today.guessers calling for rain tomorrow.Need to eat and run.Pastor is off so I am the sub for Matt's class tonight.
Paul of Covington I think of bayous generally as rivers without a regular current flowing. They are formed when rivers change course leaving the abandoned river beds with water sitting in them. Unless there is a lot of rain or strong winds there is usually no current flowing in them.
Norris,
Up until the mid 70s, your vision of bayous would be pretty spot on.
Buffalo bayou has it's head water near highway 6 on the west side of the city, it and White Oak Bayou way to the north west, both are natural drainage as Tree pointed out.
White Oak drained the big rice fields, cotton fields and dairy frams to the north north west, Buffalo bayou drained the rice fields west out near Katy.
White Oak was channelized in the mid 70s when developers began building huge new subdivisions to the north west...where once farmland soaked up the rain, now there were building, roads and such which interfered with that process, so the modified it, along the same lines as the LA River.
White Oak ties into Buffalo Bayou at the foot of Main street in downtown Houston, the SP had its Eastern headquarters, and the SP Grand Central Station less than 100 yards from that spot, and the Katy's passenger station right on the bayou, in fact, their passenger platform was built on a trestle over the bayou, which is where the original Port of Houston was conceived...you could boat up Buffalo Bayou from Galveston, and deliver right to the bottom of Main Street, with access to the SP and the Katy at the same spot.
Lots of cotton bypassed Galveston and came right to the SP at main street right up until the mid 20s when cotton was replaced by oil as the main product of Houston.
Buffalo Bayou ranges from 20 to 30 feet width at its headwater to several hundred feet closer to Galveston bay...the closer it gets to the bay, the wider it becomes.
There are still spots all along Buffalo Bayou that look like they came out of a Southern gothic novel...when I was a kid, the county line was right behind our house, we could walk north along White Oak with our 22s and fishing poles and amuse ourselves all day without meeting another sole!
And yes, Buffalo Bayou still has gators...lots of sections have been left alone as habitat locations, we are on a major bird migration route, and there is even a local Kayak club that puts in at Highway 6 in the west and ride all the way to downtown.
Oddly, Buffalo Bayou has several springs that feed it, one is located downtown just east of the U of H campus, it has a nice white sandy beach in the bend.
The Army Corp of Engineers dredge the channel all the time from bridge 5A to the bay, the only major alteration to the bayou is the turning basin, designed to allow ocean going ships turn around at the end of the channel, from that point to the headwater, it is left in it's natural state.
Go to Google maps and take a look, Buffalo Bayou is hard to miss, and follow it back towards downtown, you will find all kinds of interesting stuff.
Or, look here for a look back in time...
http://www.historicaerials.com/aerials.php?op=home
Just type Houston Tx in the search engine...or your own city and have fun looking at how it used to be....
DeggestyI recall going down to Bayou Corne (SW of Baton Rouge) in June of 1953 with my two oldest brothers, my oldest brother's wife and their son, and fishing. There was practically no detectable movement of the water except when fish jumped out and fell back in.
Johnny, I'm sure you heard about the community of Bayou Corne being wiped out by a giant sinkhole a couple of years ago. Someone drilled too close to the edge of a salt dome causing it to collapse.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=bayou+corne+sinkhole
edblysardOr, look here for a look back in time...
I recently did that for the old home town in MI after someone posted a Facebook picture of a silo that still stands - trying to figure out where it was. Did finally find it.
The numerous "tongue-in-cheek" conspiracy theory postings that followed that FB posting were amusing - although one (missile silo) was only slightly off-base, as there really was a Nike missile base near there...
It's a neat site - and if you want to see ground level pictures, try "Shorpy."
Paul of Covington Deggesty I recall going down to Bayou Corne (SW of Baton Rouge) in June of 1953 with my two oldest brothers, my oldest brother's wife and their son, and fishing. There was practically no detectable movement of the water except when fish jumped out and fell back in. Johnny, I'm sure you heard about the community of Bayou Corne being wiped out by a giant sinkhole a couple of years ago. Someone drilled too close to the edge of a salt dome causing it to collapse. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=bayou+corne+sinkhole
Deggesty I recall going down to Bayou Corne (SW of Baton Rouge) in June of 1953 with my two oldest brothers, my oldest brother's wife and their son, and fishing. There was practically no detectable movement of the water except when fish jumped out and fell back in.
BOB WITHORNPaul, Is that the one that sucked the whole lake and some homes down the drain? Bob
The link for that one was on the sidebar on YouTube when I watched the video linked here.
Bob, as I recall, some homes were destroyed, and the company wound up buying everybody out. There was enough warning with tremors that I don't think there were any casualties.
The commentators said there has never been anything like it, but I remember back around 1980 or so a salt dome collapsed suddenly and swallowed a whole lake including a tugboat and barge that were never seen again.
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