It was a jolt from sleep. Normally, I hear muffled rumbles of thunder and weak flashes of light if I wake up at all. Last night was something else. The roars of thunder were astonishing as was the flashes of lightening that lit up my bedroom through blackout drapes. It was so unusual, I grabbed my phone and checked the NBC weather App to see a line of storms covering the Metroplex all the way back to Abilene. As it was, tornadoes hit Franklin, Texas south of Dallas.
While it wasn't as bad sounding after the initial jolt, it still could be heard enough that I cap napped for another two hours before finally giving in to a return to sleep. I slept beyond my usual time to wake up by over an hour and that was interrupted with yet another round of rowdy thunder and lightening. Had that not happened, I might have slept to noon.
It was closer to two before I got out of the house with umbrella in hand. And a troublesome tire picked today to be the day to split at the shoulder and was nearly flat. So, my first stop was to the friendly tire shop to get a new tire. Some days are just filled with surprises and I deal with them as they come up. There is no need to worry about things that you cannot control.
There were still several weather hazards still active of which one was a flash flood warning for White Rock Creek. That is always one that will bring me to the lake even if I hadn't planned on going. The flow of White Rock Creek is like a river, not a creek, and in the summer, the Trinity River is more like a creek than a river. It's one of those misnomers that is somewhat of a paradox. The flow of plastic bottles and debris is rather sickening. It comes from all the northern burbs and get picked up in the runoff flow of alleyways, ditches then into storm drains and into White Rock Creek.
As I made my way around the lake, the secondary spillway and White Rock Creek below the tidal pool from the main dam and spillway were level with each other. That's normally a 30 to 40 foot drop. The USGS gauges in the tidal pool were all under water. I didn't even check the website because the readings would not be posting or at flood stage or above. But, it was drawing a large number of people to take photos and selfish with the roaring water behind them.
When I made my way down West Lawther, the parking areas and docks were all pretty much empty but alone the shoreline, the high winds had pushed the debris flow all the way across the lake from where White Rock Creek enters the lake to the west side of the lake's shorelines. The water didn't get as high as I had thought that I would find it and that is a good thing. The clean up of plastic will be confined to the shoreline in a about a two foot wide band of wood and plastic.
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| This is the tidal pool below the main dam and spillway. Where you see a line between smooth surface and more rough water is where the secondary spillway steps down that 30 feet drop. White Rock Creek begins again right at the bridge line going south into south Dallas where it flows into the Trinity River. From there its a few hundred miles to the Gulf. |
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| Here comes the water over the dam and down the long and wide spillway into the two channels on either side of the island into the tidal pool before it makes that left turn at the secondary spillway that is big blocks like steps that drops about 30 feet in height where it returns to White Rock Creek again |
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| The west side of the lake where the debris has collected for several hundred yards. |
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