Wet Again

Saturday was beautiful, so I did ride, but it wasn't much of a ride because my arena had some standing water in one corner. And while the surface was dry on the rest, it wasn't dry enough for a horse who might get sassy. Strike that. Dry enough for a horse with attitude. <Cough, cough> Izzy. On Sunday morning, I woke up to an unforcasted rainy day which meant even wetter footing. What. The. Heck.

My Sunday morning view.

Last week, I shared photos of the rising Kern River. A day later, water engineers began increasing the outflow from under the Isabella Dam. A few days ago, the release rate was 414 SFD (1 Second-Foot-Day equals 646,325.5 Gallons). On Sunday, the flow had been increased to almost 3,000 SFD. You can do the math to get the exact number of gallons rushing past the barn. I'll just say this, it's a lot!

So far, the water hasn't climbed our bank, but the neighbors across the river haven't been so lucky. Their lawns are now partly under water. The ranch sits a bit higher on the north side, but when it finally does reach our pastures, the neighbors on the south side will have water up to their back doors. It happened a few years ago, and back then their homes stayed dried. This year might be a different story.

Bank to bank.

In the meantime, this once or twice-a-week rain is making it very challenging to ride with any consistency. I was certain that Saturday's bright sunshine and warm temperatures were going to give me most of my arena back. Nope. We have two more storms on the horizon, one today and another in the next week. Our meteorologist is predicting several more storms in the month of April. He even labeled our frustration as rain trauma. I don't know how "traumatic" it is, but it is certainly getting old. Most of you are rolling your eyes because you see rain and snow every winter. I'll admit it; this California girl enjoys our typically mild winters. I like being able to ride 360 days a year.

​At least I can still clean tack and groom.