"How high's the water, Mama?

...six feet high and rising ...."  It has been raining here all month, and not a day goes by without those lyrics from a Johnny Cash ballad popping into my mind.The water level in the Savannah River outside our back door seems to have stopped rising, but the water velocity has increased substantially.

The river is booming past our dock at about 46,400 cubic feet per second (according to the nearest US Geological Survey stream monitor gauge), bringing with it large quantities of logs and other flotsam.

The usual summer flow rate here is about 3,800cfs. This time last week, Engineers were releasing 16,000cfs.

That soggy and un-mowed  swatch of green in the foreground of the photo above is part of our lawn. The floor of the gazebo to the left in this photo is usually about eight feet above the water.

And it continues to rain and rain and rain.

All of the three large dams upstream from our home are full to over-full. The Army Corps of Engineers, manager of the dams in the Savannah River watershed, is releasing water as fast as it can without causing undue downstream damage.

In a report yesterday,  Engineers estimated it will take three weeks to a month of water releases at the present rate to bring the reservoirs down from flood to storage levels. That estimate assumes rainfall will moderate soon.

Army Corps of Engineers photo

Also yesterday, about a thousand people showed up at the Thurmond Dam to witness a timely test of the structure's 23 floodgates. The floodgates apparently worked satisfactorily.




All the rain has caused the atmosphere to be really funky inside Ms. Bettencourt. The relative humidity seems to be approaching mushroom growing levels.

I have been fighting mildew on the overheads, bulkheads and decks. Condensation under the bunk mattresses has become such a concern that I will bring the mattresses into the house if it ever stops raining. The pilot house windows and all the under-seat lockers are open, with a large fan running in the forward cabin. Perhaps air movement will help abate the fungus.

Painting inside the pilot house cabin in such weather is out of the question, but I have begun some halting surface preparation.

Even a little sunshine would be very motivating.