# weather stories



## campfire (Sep 9, 2007)

Any one have any good weather stories from the holiday weekend? I had to work but I suspect that there was some wild camping somewhere.


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## #1DEER 1-I (Sep 10, 2007)

Just some rain never seen any snow while on the mountain though as it was supposed to.


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## The Naturalist (Oct 13, 2007)

It was a dark and stormy night. :twisted: :lol: 8) No camping, nothing really wild.
I'm the Watermaster for our local irrigation company. About 11:00 p.m. Sunday I got a call from one of our customers that the 18 inch pipe in front of their residence wasn't handling the flow of water, and was running all over. That surprised me - though I knew we had a good rain going I didn't think it was enough to flood. I ran up to the Davis/Weber canal where we take the water and the canal was within 6 inches of topping the bank. We have a weir to measure the flow which was showing a significant increase in water, plus water was pouring into the ditch line from another source, but it was to dark to ascertain its origin, other than runoff from the storm.
So I had to shut off the water coming in from the canal. That stopped most of the water but, there was still a significant amount coming from the canal. It took a while to trace its origin on the dark, stormy night. The canal was running so high that the water had found a path through an abandoned muskrat burrow. I didn't want to try and fix that @ night and in the rain, luckily we have another emergency diversion point where we can run the water into Kays Creek. 
I earned my annual salary as Watermaster that night, $53.00! :shock:


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## Huge29 (Sep 17, 2007)

The Naturalist said:


> It was a dark and stormy night. :twisted: :lol: 8) No camping, nothing really wild.
> I'm the Watermaster for our local irrigation company. About 11:00 p.m. Sunday I got a call from one of our customers that the 18 inch pipe in front of their residence wasn't handling the flow of water, and was running all over. That surprised me - though I knew we had a good rain going I didn't think it was enough to flood. I ran up to the Davis/Weber canal where we take the water and the canal was within 6 inches of topping the bank. We have a weir to measure the flow which was showing a significant increase in water, plus water was pouring into the ditch line from another source, but it was to dark to ascertain its origin, other than runoff from the storm.
> So I had to shut off the water coming in from the canal. That stopped most of the water but, there was still a significant amount coming from the canal. It took a while to trace its origin on the dark, stormy night. The canal was running so high that the water had found a path through an abandoned muskrat burrow. I didn't want to try and fix that @ night and in the rain, luckily we have another emergency diversion point where we can run the water into Kays Creek.
> I earned my annual salary as Watermaster that night, $53.00! :shock:


Including overtime?


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## Riverrat77 (Sep 7, 2007)

Built a debris shelter in a snowstorm up on the mountain over the holiday weekend. Good times.... I have pictures but was an idiot and didn't have a memory card in the camera so its all on the internal memory. Got up the hill, the basin I wanted to glass was socked in with snow. Thought... well, I'm up here, I'm not turning around and going back. I started stacking some deadfall against a pine tree just a "prelim" to building a shelter, thinking that if I needed to, I could finish it in a hurry. Well, I had a bunch of "poles" stacked in a semi teepee shape on this pine tree and the weather kinda broke. I hiked up the ridge just to see some very dark, thick clouds rolling over the ridge in my direction. My first thought was oh man, this is going to suck. I hurried back down the hill and began stacking pine boughs in a layered pattern working up the shelter when the storm caught me. I finished the shelter in the snow blowing horizontally from the extremely hard winds and when lightning began zapping around on the ridge, I quit and crawled inside. I used my Badlands pack as a pillow and kinda curled up to ride it out. I spent about two hours in there and finally decided it was time to leave and head out as fast as I could go. It was still extremely windy, cloudy and cold when I headed down, plus all the bushes were wet with rain/snow so my pants were soaked within five minutes. Fortunately, cold wet legs never has really made the rest of me cold so I just kept going, stopping once I got out of the clouds to take some other pictures of the area. I couldn't even see where I'd been because it was buried in clouds. I kinda stood around until the wind dried my clothes from water and sweat and then continued down the mountain. Of course, by the time I got down, the weather had broken once again and the sun came out so at least my ride home was warm. Learned a few things that day and have since gone back and improved the shelter in case I or somebody else needs a place to crash in the weather again. I need to layer the ground in hay or pine boughs though because eventually, a bit of cold from the dry ground started to creep in while I was laying there.... which actually kinda prompted me to get the hell out of there. 8)


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## Chaser (Sep 28, 2007)

After dinner on Sunday night (Labor Day Weekend), my wife's brothers and their families chickened out because of a little rain, and pulled the plug early on their camping for the weekend. My wife and I decided to tuff it out and stay till the next morning so we could help her parents clean up the mess from the weekend. I won't say it was the worst time I have had out camping, but it really sucked dealing with that rain all night. Our tent shed most of the rain, but with the quantities that fell that night, we were bound to get some leakage. It rained and hailed and sleeted all night long, which kept me awake most of the night, just from the noise as it pelted the tent roof, and made me worry about the cleanup the next morning. Finally it started to get light out, so we got up and started to break down camp. We got our things picked up and packed into the truck pretty quickly, but we spent the next hour and a half taking down canopies and dismantling camp kitchens, and combing the campsite for trash that the kiddies had left around. It sure was a pain cleaning up after all those people, but luckily the rain decided to stop just long enough to get it all packed up. My wife was pretty upset that her brothers and their families left early and got out of helping with the cleanup, especially since their kids were the big mess makers. What a weekend! 

PS- When I got home I went out dove hunting with my buddy and didn't end up even seeing any doves except the city dwellers.


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## Finnegan (Sep 7, 2007)

I was bowhunting for a particular buck and decided to hike down into a deep, steep canyon looking for him. When I got down into the bottom, I took a bad tumble. Tore up my left leg and arm pretty good, lots of blood but only superficial. And hey, I saved my bow! So I gathered myself together and eventually hiked back out. No real damage done.

Sunday morning I woke up early, eager to get after it although stiff and sore from the previous day's misadventure. Nothing an Irish coffee wouldn't cure. As I was transferring things from my dirty, bloody pants from the day before into a clean pair, I noticed one of the back pockets was ripped...the pocket where I keep my wallet. Where's my wallet? -)O(- 

So, off I went back down that deep, steep canyon in hopes of finding my wallet. Talk about feeling sick...credit cards, debit card, hunting permits, CWP, cash. I didn't even have enough gas to get home!

To make a long story short and much to my delighted relief, I found the wallet right where I'd taken the fall. I'd already discovered that this canyon wasn't a good place to hunt, so I started climbing back out. The wind came up and it felt good at first, working up the sweat that I was. Then the wind really started blowing, the clouds rolled in and it started to rain - a few big, heavy drops at first, then a lot of big, heavy drops, then sheets of rain blowing sideways. Amazing how cold rain water can be, too.

I ducked under cover for a half hour or so, debating my options. I decided the best option was to just cowboy up and get out of there. Or to quote Nicholas Cage, "It ain't exactly mai-tais and yahtzee out here, but let's do it!"

The only thing tougher than climbing a steep, deep canyon is climbing a steep, deep, muddy canyon. And the further I went, the less my left knee wanted to do it's part due to getting bruised up the day before. So...big right step, slide back, drag up the left. Big right step, slide back, drag up the left. Usually, I hum a song when I'm in a hard hike to keep up a pace. But there aren't any songs with the rhythm I needed.

Obviously, I got out. But I'd had enough and even with a day left to hunt, I figured wisdom was the better part of valor and went home.


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