Flash Flooding Hits Sabbatical Ranch

Arizona’s infamous flash flooding finally struck us. For the last couple of weeks the monsoon thunderstorms have been hitting all around us but mostly either entirely missing us or just sprinkling a little bit – until Saturday. We’ve had our fair share of severe rain events, but nothing like this one. No neighbors we know remember anything like this ever hitting here!

It dropped massive amounts of water in a very short period of time! All of our water-harvesting earthworks were filled way beyond capacity and overflowed. Most of them were damaged at the overflow points. Several one rock dams and rock mulch rundowns were ripped out entirely. My earthworks have all been done with a shovel so they are relatively small. This is the best way to gain experience with earthworks. Small failures don’t do serious damage. Large earthwork failures can do lots of damage when all that water is released.

Most of the landscape and many plants were covered in mud. Fortunately, most of our infrastructure was undamaged. The only damage was to the fence. We did capture and infiltrate tons of water into the ground. If it was just the water falling on Sabbatical Ranch, I think we would have been fine. It was all the water coming from neighbors that overwhelmed us. We took a few representative pictures that illustrate the results.

When an “act of God” hits, it reminds you of the weakness and frailty of man and his works. Many people like to live sensuously and glorify themselves or exalt others (Has social media exacerbated this problem?) and yet man in all his pomp and circumstance is like the flower of the field that is here today and gone tomorrow. God is all powerful and eternal. That is a comforting thought in light of world events!

Water Pouring into Sabbatical Ranch
This Was the Waterfall: That 4′ diameter culvert was installed about 20 years ago and the road was raised another 5′ above the top of that.
Another View: One neighbor said he’s never seen so much water that it flowed over the road.
That “island” is a massive hugelkultur we built on an elevated bank beside Kai Blue Creek which is about 20′ wide. The water overflowed the banks and is probably about 50-60′ wide here.
Water from the neighbor’s horse pasture clogged the critter guard (4′ high metal hardware cloth with 1/2″ openings to prevent small critters from going through) with debris and then the water pressure was so high that it knocked over one 10’ section.
The bottom of the fence is near the top of the picture. Below it was a massive berm I built to span a gully and have the fence sit on top. I already had hardware extending down the berm for about 4′. I just extended it another four feet and will build one rock dams one after another as each one backs up sediment behind it. The end result will be much stronger.
Another like the previous one, but not nearly as tall.
Here’s where Hunter Creek flows into Sabbatical Ranch (on the left). This flash flood event carved the creek bottom about 1′ lower. The neighbor on the other side in the golf cart said, “Definitely the most I’ve seen since I moved here 25 years ago.”

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