Flash Flood! by Norman L. Kincaide So I was supposed to help my good friend, Don Bird, with his 1994 GMC pickup. He needed help putting the front hood back on after he painted it. So I left Rocky Ford for Penrose, CO about 2:30 p. m on Saturday, August 3, 2013, bought some melons and cantaloupes that Don had requested and I drove through Pueblo to Penrose and to Don’s house. He said he was working that day would be back home about 3:30. When I got here he wasn’t there and neither was his dog, Dawg. I thought they may have gone to the store to buy more items for dinner; he was going to cook ribs. The ribs were in the crock pot. So I sat out on his back porch and watched the clear blue sky and waited. No Don, no Dawg. So I turn my cell phone on and there are two messages for me. Don left two messages. Dawg got bit by a rattlesnake right after he got home and had to take him to the Vet in Pueblo where they had anti-venom. So I call Don back at the Vet Hospital and he said I could cook the ribs and bakes beans and go ahead and eat without him. I said I would wait until he got back. He did not know how long he would be at the Vet Clinic and that Dawg would probably have to stay overnight there. So I watched the news for a while until I looked out side a little before 7 p.m. and noticed dark clouds low over the landscape to the north obscuring Pike’s Peak. Don called back and said he was on his way home and was west of Pueblo West. He had to leave Dawg at the Vet hospital. As soon as we ended our conversation the wind started to blow right out of the north, then with rain, not straight down, but sideways, almost horizontal. The rain really came. I pulled my van as close to the south side of Don’s house as I could and wondered if I should move his other pickup into his garage. I call him back and tell him we’ve got a real storm. He’s on the phone and says: There’s two tornados touching down to the north of Highway 50 not a half a mile from him. I told him to hang up and drive for cover. In the meantime it rained from seven after 6pm. The rain obscured the house to the west of Don’s house. I expected hail from this storm but there were only a few small hail stones. The wind finally quite, then came the flood of water that filled Don’s pond (which was completely dry when I arrived at 4:45 P.m. Don got back about 7 P.M. After the pond filled up it overflowed into irrigation canal. Not long after the pond filled with water hundreds of toads appeared and started a chorus of clicking and croaking that continues today and will continue for about a week. I had seen Don’s pond full before but this was the first time I got to see the FLASH FLOOD! Oh, and Dawg is okay, we picked him up this morning. The fangs didn’t go very deep and Dawg was pretty much his old self, but limping with the injured front foot.
Posted on: Mon, 05 Aug 2013 01:16:20 +0000
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