Wednesday, March 13, 2019

Flood Warning for the Baraboo River in Rock Springs


I am getting ready for another flood. The Baraboo river borders my farm. In 2008, we got a huge flood, which at the time was dubbed a 100 year flood. That meant, it was a flood that was supposed to come only every 100 years. Well, the floods are becoming more frequent.
In 2008, the flood water was inside the farm house, on the main level of the house. Last August, the flood water touched the bottom of the floor, and soaked the whole thing. The floors and furnace had to be replaced. 
Last year, I moved all of my paintings into the hay mow in the barn. They were safe and dry. However, I had a trunk of older paintings, stored in a shed, that I did not remember to move. These were paintings from 2008-2013. They all got ruined. 
Tonight, I am going to start preparing for the high water. I'll go into my chicken coop studio, and move everything into the hay mow. Then I'll make sure that there is nothing important in the milk house or the basement. I don't think I'll have to move much on the main level of the farmhouse, because I don't predict that the water will reach that height, and also, there's no place to put most of it upstairs. 
Who knows, maybe this will make for some good painting?




The Baraboo River is predicted to crest at 25.7 feet, which is a major flood.
On 6/11/2008 the river crested at 28.73 feet. On 8/31/2018 it crested at 27.60 feet. This Saturday, the Baraboo river flood is predicted to be two feet lower than last August.

This is the neighbors farm, in September 2018, after the flood already started to recede.

Here is my neighbor, Tim Harms, coming to pick me up in a canoe.

Tim Harms and I grabbed some paintings from my studio, that I took to Chicago during the flood.

I painted the flood last august. If you look closely, in the background, you can see the intersection of HWY 154 and 136 under water. This is downtown Rock Springs, which is pretty much vacant these days as it has been hit with floods several times in the past 10 years.

IT still looks like this outside, there is still snow and ice everywhere. However, the sky's are dark and it's pouring rain. I guess we will see what happens!



2 comments:

Unknown said...

Best of luck in the coming days.

Kyle Martin said...

Thank you, The flood was not into the house this time around, so all went well.