Return of the Triffids

[Ysarex]

Flowers don't normally give me the creeps, but this one does. Can't report any episodes of sudden blindness in the neighborhood but I'm keeping an eye on this one anyway.

Monarda is blooming in the garden.

Joe

 

[danbob6]

I wouldn't turn my back on it...

 

[smoke665]

Wouldn't go walking after dark in garden with them in it! Never seen this before, thanks for sharing.

Wondered about you the other day, are you on high ground?

 

[Ysarex]

Wouldn't go walking after dark in garden with them in it! Never seen this before, thanks for sharing.

Wondered about you the other day, are you on high ground?

It's in the mint family.

We're high and dry living in the neighborhood know as "The Hill." It's pretty threatening further south along the River des Peres. Used to be little more than a creek in bygone days. Now it's a big drainage ditch that is normally dry but the river will back up into it and threaten a large portion of south city. Some apartments along the south side of it have been evacuated and the city is loading sandbags at critical locations. The bottom of the ditch is below everything else but to get a good idea of the threat here's a map where I've marked the extent of the river back up. All the bridges that cross it up to 366 have the water lapping at the bridge bottoms. This was the big failure in '93 as they failed to contain the River des Peres and it flooded large residential sections. They did a lot of work on it since and so far we're getting off with very little loss. Of course that's small consolation to the folks in the bottom map where I marked flooded.

Joe

The city is trying real hard to keep the intersection at Lemay and Marceau open. The bridge there is underwater and the north end of the bridge is sandbagged. I marked an X to locate a storm drain cover at the edge of the intersection -- it's now a fountain with water spurting about 1.5 feet into the air. MSD is diverting the water to a pool east of the intersection and running pumps to send the water back up and over.

 

[smoke665]

@Ysarex From what I'm seeing on the news it's still below the 93 level - barely. My cousin lives south of there at Grand Tower, IL. They have a double threat, the river on one side of the levee, and the heavy rains have flooded the land being protected by the levee because it has no where to go. Cousin also lives on a high hill overlooking the town, so they're safe from any flooding, but may not be able to get out because of the roads being under water. Sadly over the years the levees have been built to contain the river, but in the process, they've forced it to rise to higher, and higher levels.

 

[Derrel]

We had a "100 year flood" in 1996, and one in 1964, and one in 1948.

Really bad in 1996, due to a "pineapple express" with 10 straight days of heavy rain in the Willamette River basin, plus up to 15 feet of snow in the coast range..lotta' water in typical western Oregon snowfall; only ONE time in 50 years have I seen dry,powdery snow in western OR..in 2008, as I recall...

Cool-looking flower! almost scary, for some reason.

 

[smoke665]

Oh and the flower should be named "Seed of Audrey II". LOL

 

[weepete]

Very cool!

 

[vintagesnaps]

Feed me, Seymour.

Nice photo of it.

Glad you're not affected by the flooding. I haven't seen much about it, but I am watching the Stanley Cup finals, I guess the show goes on.

 

[Soocom1]

I am very pretty and I am going to turn you into a pod-person!

 

[vintagesnaps]

I thought at first glance from the title he meant Tribbles. Just better stay out of the garden.

 

[Ysarex]

@Ysarex From what I'm seeing on the news it's still below the 93 level - barely. My cousin lives south of there at Grand Tower, IL. They have a double threat, the river on one side of the levee, and the heavy rains have flooded the land being protected by the levee because it has no where to go. Cousin also lives on a high hill overlooking the town, so they're safe from any flooding, but may not be able to get out because of the roads being under water. Sadly over the years the levees have been built to contain the river, but in the process, they've forced it to rise to higher, and higher levels.

I know Grand Tower well -- wonder how close the water is to the top of that rock in the river. Ill. 3 I'm sure is under water in some areas. I believe it's under at Chester right now. The whole levee issue is a mess and the way things are going looks like the rivers plan to solve it for us. The Missouri system is in complete collapse right now with the number of levee breaches counting up into the hundreds between Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri.

Next we turn our attention to the lower Mississippi and start worrying about Old River Control. The Corps already opened the Bonnet Carre spillway last month and the Morganza Spillway a week ago when that's not enough they come up here and pop the New Madrid Floodway -- haven't heard that they're planning it yet but it's the next move.

Joe

 

[smoke665]

@Ysarex They still have a little margin on the levee, but the problem is that like most of the others, it's old, and never designed to sustain long term pressure. Several boils along it, one just recently in the town.

Being from the Missouri side I can tell you there is still a lot of resentment over them blowing the levee at Bird's Point in 2011, flooding 130,000 acres of taxpaying prime farmland to save Cairo, a town that died years ago.

 

[Ysarex]

@Ysarex They still have a little margin on the levee, but the problem is that like most of the others, it's old, and never designed to sustain long term pressure. Several boils along it, one just recently in the town.

Being from the Missouri side I can tell you there is still a lot of resentment over them blowing the levee at Bird's Point in 2011, flooding 130,000 acres of taxpaying prime farmland to save Cairo, a town that died years ago.

They don't do it to save Cairo -- that's the excuse they use and feed to the public and press. They do it to take pressure off Old River Control and they don't like to talk about Old River so they just say it's to save Cairo. The New Madrid Floodway will pull 1/5 of the flow until it fills up. They can hold the water there as long as needed and the goal just like the goal of the Morganza floodway is to drop the pressure at Old River.

Joe

 

[smoke665]

@Ysarex They still have a little margin on the levee, but the problem is that like most of the others, it's old, and never designed to sustain long term pressure. Several boils along it, one just recently in the town.

Being from the Missouri side I can tell you there is still a lot of resentment over them blowing the levee at Bird's Point in 2011, flooding 130,000 acres of taxpaying prime farmland to save Cairo, a town that died years ago.

They don't do it to save Cairo -- that's the excuse they use and feed to the public and press. They do it to take pressure off Old River Control and they don't like to talk about Old River so they just say it's to save Cairo. The New Madrid Floodway will pull 1/5 of the flow until it fills up. They can hold the water there as long as needed and the goal just like the goal of the Morganza floodway is to drop the pressure at Old River.

Joe

I heard some chatter about that but Birds Point was designed as a spillway that would have let excess water overflow, relieving pressure downstream. They blew it because it wasn't relieving pressure upstream (Cairo)