Floods and the Niagara of the South!

A few weeks ago, it rained 4.5" over Saturday/Sunday. (For reference, 1" of rain is the equivalent of ~12" of snow.) It rains a lot here, but this was more than usual. It caused lots of flooding, and many of my students were trapped and couldn't get out of their areas to get to school; in our area, one of the two ways out to the highway from our house was flooded over. In the pictures with the green cones (taken Monday afternoon), the road where you see water is normally a bridge over a medium-sized creek that is usually 5 feet or more below the bottom of the bridge. A friend had been over for dinner the night before this picture was taken (when it was still raining). Fortunately she had a big truck, but she said the water hit the tops of her wheel wells! The blocked road is the first two pictures; the third picture shows the field alongside the road on the other way out from our house that was not blocked. It's normally a grazing area for cattle, with this little creek off in the distance. The water comes clear up to the edge of the road!

This lake/swamp you can see is normally a cornfield.

This is the view along the road from the second way out from our house. The line of trees in the back is where the creek normally is.

The week after all this rain, we decided to go visit Cumberland Falls waterfall in Kentucky (it's only about 90 minutes away and claims to be the Niagara of the South, so how could we not visit?! Especially with all that rain - extra water is a bonus in waterfalls!!). The falls are 68 feet tall and 125 feet wide.

Henry absolutely loved it. He spent the entire time at the falls excitedly yelling, "Wattafall! Watta!! WATTAFALL!!!!! Play water?? Oh, is dirty! Watta!!" on repeat. He loved the noise, the dirty water, the rainbows in the mist (which don't show up in the pictures, sadly), all the climbing on rocks, and the huge waterfall. I hadn't expected him to like it that much, but I think if he could tell us his top 3 favorite experiences of his life, this would be up there, right behind the first time he tried fruit snacks and jumping on his friend's indoor kid trampoline.

This excursion was last weekend (one week after the flooding), and every day for this past week Henry has asked me this question when we get in the car in the morning: "Have fun waterfall today?" We may have to plan a return visit.







Here's a little video of the falls. They don't look that big on this tiny screen, but they were actually pretty impressive!