Bad Weather

Apparently, I jinxed my trip home by posting about it. The Bad Weather Gods decided to take out the drain plug in their bathtub this weekend, and since home is down river I would probably be pushing my luck by going. May Feast is fun for those of us who like to sit around a BBQ pit and bullshit all day, but it is not worth getting there and risking the rivers flooding so I'm stranded.

Yep, good ol' Nordheim, TX is the highest point above sea level between Houston, San Antonio, and Corpus. It is also close enough to the San Antonio and Guadalupe rivers to make flooding interesting. While the Guadalupe is miles away, looping around Cuero, the San Antonio is closer by a few miles just outside of Runge. Yeah, Nordheim will never flood unless the water level reaches 300+ feet above sea level. But that doesn't mean the surrounding areas don't get inundated and cut that little slice of heaven off from the rest of the civilized world. And this is just the rivers; I'm not even talking about the various creeks in the area that feed those rivers.

Yesterday it started raining at about 9 am and it didn't stop until almost 2 pm. It slowed down every once in a while, but it never fully stopped raining. All that water has to go somewhere. From here, it goes into the San Antonio river. North of us in Gruene and New Braunfels it all goes to the Guadalupe.

When the Guadalupe floods, Cuero makes headline news. Oh, the poor people that live there don't know what to do when it floods. They should be used to it. The founders of the town thought it was a novel idea to situate the town in the bend of the river. For the most part she stays within her banks and meanders around the town. When we get heavy rains up here, though, the Guadalupe likes to jump her banks and go THROUGH Cuero, obliterating some of it. I still marvel at the fact that people move there to live and don't expect to get flooded at least once every other year. In a bad year, the Guadalupe will jump her banks a couple times. Water has gotten as high as 17 feet in some parts, the waterline marked by the dirty line across the tops of the taller buildings. Living there is like living on top of the San Andreas fault and expecting never to experience an earthquake.

On the other side of Runge away from Nordheim, the San Antonio river runs in deep banks and for the most part a shallow valley. While Cuero is IN the shallow valley of the Guadalupe, Runge is not so close to the San Antonio. However, you do have to cross it at least once to get out of Runge going toward any other major sign of life on the highway. When it rains - like it did yesterday - enough in San Antonio, the river named after the city of the Alamo floods. The town of Runge does not flood, but there is no way to get to Kenedy, Goliad, or Floresville without crossing that river. The only place you can go from Runge when the San Antonio floods is Nordheim, or Yorktown. But past Yorktown is Cuero, and between Yorktown and Goliad is the Guadalupe... again. These little towns are totally blockaded in flood season.

So, we are not making our trek to Nordheim's May Feast this year. I do not want to get there, have the rivers swell up, and have no way of getting home until they recede. Damn the luck.