CBRR Storm Damage

Southern Marshall County had quite a storm roll through early in the morning on Wednesday, July 10.  Blue Rapids had a lot of damage to trees.  It turns out the railroad has quite a few downed trees to deal with also.  Dave and Kathy Crawford went east from Blue Rapids on Tuesday, July 16 and cleared several small trees and branches from the tracks.  Things weren't really too bad until east of the Vista RD crossing where they encountered a large downed tree (first photo below).  The tree was more than they could handle with the saws-all they had with them.

On Thursday, July 18, Gene Harding and Dave Crawford went out with the intention of cutting down that tree, which they did.  Three or four trees later (who's counting) it was time to call it quits and come back another day.  At one point, a deer came along and was very curious about what we were doing.  That provided a short rest break until the deer wandered off.  The deer is near the center of the 2nd (middle) picture.

After cutting down the tree in the last picture, inspection of the track further east revealed another large tree across the rails, thus the decision to return on another day.  The rails between Waterville and Blue Rapids have not been inspected and it is quite likely that some downed tress will be found there as well. (Current lake info follows the pictures.)

PS:  As of Thursday, July 18 the Tuttle Creek Lake elevation is down to 1125 ft.  They are currently releasing at a rate of 25,000 cfs and will do so for several weeks.  The present goal is to get it down to 1105 ft.  A release of 25,000 cfs is about 50,000 acre·ft per day.  They have about 1.34 million acre·ft of water to discharge in order to get back to the normal multipurpose pool elevation of 1075 ft.

The Big Blue River at Blue Rapids is at about 50 ft.  Flood stage is 26 ft so it has about 14 ft to drop in order to be back inside its banks.  Without additional rainfall, the lake and river elevation should drop about 1 ft per day at the present release rate of 25,000 cfs.

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