October Flood

On October 30th, Austin experienced a very heavy rainfall. In our area, we estimate that 15 inches fell in a 3 hour period. Tekmos is located on a small hill, so we survived without any damage other than a small roof leak.

Behind Tekmos is Carson Creek, which did flood. The waters reached our parking lot, but were still 4 feet below our floor. There is a hiking trail that runs along the creek, and has several nice foot bridges that cross the creek. That did not survive. The creek also flooded two of the three roads we use to access Tekmos, and also shut down both highways 71 and 183, which are major roads next to Tekmos.

One watershed over is Onion Creek. Onion Creek is a much larger creek, and had the worst flooding. At one point, the flow rate was measured at 120K CFS. For comparison, Niagara Falls was running at 84K CFS the same day.

This is a picture of Carson Creek just going over the roadway of the road behind Tekmos.

 

And here is another picture looking upstream.

Today (November 2nd), I took a hike along what remained of our trail. The trail has been stripped of its sand, and is now just tar paper and dirt. The large rocks that lined it have been tossed around by the waters.

Many of the rocks lining the trail had been left scattered across a nearby field.

Here are the remains of one of the foot bridges that crossed the creek.

Eventually the creek reached Riverside and Highway 183. At this point, it is in a concrete lined ditch. A 30 foot section of the ditch had been broken off and swept downstream. The antennas in the background are part of the airport. That is why I feel comfortable with using the airports rain totals as our own.

Eventually, the creek goes under Riverside. Here, it looks like some of the concrete slabs had become wedged under the bridge, forcing the waters over the top and flooding highway 183. The sidewalk of the bridge was also scoured.