Aside from the high water levels of area lakes, some small creeks and streams are extremely swollen.

Earlier today I was up in Rome, where I found that Nikki's Birthday cache is casualty to the flood. This cache is in a hollow tree near a creek. The little creek is currently 60 feet wide and the base of tree is under water. I can't say for sure, but I'm guessing that this tree is normally 20 feet from the creek.

The situation at West Point Lake was related to the I-85 bridge over the Chattahoochee. The water got up to the beams of that bridge and they had to close the interstate down. It caused a 70 mile detour around that 3 - 4 miles of highway. They struck a balance between water over that bridge and water backed up in the lake.

Alabama had the same situation pretty much. My dad sent this picture of his back yard. Notice the dock floating out in the lake. The lake is about 8 feet up in this photo and the dock is pretty much where the land is. It has a swivel runner out to the dock and I bet it is at about a 60 degree angle underwater. The furthest trees are right next to the normal edge too. He lives just south of I-20 just east of Pell City on Logan Martin Lake.

I found this page about Current Lake Levels during the drought. As for West Point Lake, even while the corp was letting water out and causing some flooding, more water was going into the lake than was coming out. So the flood would have been worse without the dam.

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Originally posted by TinSparrow:
I can't say for sure, but I'm guessing that this tree is normally 20 feet from the creek.

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We found Nikki's Birthday Cache the week after Easter. It's at the top of the bank of what I thought was a really deep ditch with just a little water in it. You're right it was probably 20 feet down to the water.

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Originally posted by AllenLacy:
As for West Point Lake, even while the corp was letting water out and causing some flooding, more water was going into the lake than was coming out. So the flood would have been worse without the dam.

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I have read a few news stories about this in the last 24 hours. Hindsight is always 20-20, but it seems that the Corps should have known a few weeks earlier that a large amount of rainfall was likely. Instead of initiating a proper drawdown, though, freeing additional flood control storage, they kept the lake level extremely high. One Corps representative said that this was due to last year's low lake levels; they didn't want to get caught without enough water this year. Instead, they got caught with too much.

In a story in the AJC, one fellow in West Point pointed out that flood waters this time rose substantially higher than the last time his business flooded ... in 1961, before the dam.

Will look at that page, thanks!

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Scott Johnson (ScottJ)

I read this article Flooding spurs outcry which does complain about the Corps of Engineers keeping the lake too high. But it also says

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Compared to '61, this week's flood is a mere nuisance. Tommy Jones, standing ankle deep in water Friday as he hung soggy bluejeans on a clothesline to dry, said the river was normally about 300 yards west of his home.

Looking toward Fort Tyler Cemetery, two blocks east of his house on U.S. 29, he pointed to a tall magnolia atop a hill -- at least 30 feet above him.

"In 1961 the water got up to the magnolia in the cemetery," he said.

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Sounds like it was much worse in 61.

Regarding Logan Martin. My Mom lives just a couple miles from it and I just went past there this weekend.

I've never seen it that high and I've been visiting the area since before the dam was put in. I remember as a kid we used to go picnicing and swimming in the Coosa River at a town that no longer exists.

Today I saw the stern of a boat sticking up out of the lake. Seems someone tied their boat up and went away for a while. The bow is tied too well. It, and the dock, is about 6 feet under water.

Ain't Nature grand?

See ya on the hunt!

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Originally posted by ScottJ:
Hindsight is always 20-20, but it seems that the Corps should have known a few weeks earlier that a large amount of rainfall was likely.

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Hehe, that would assume that we can predict the weather!!! Any more than five days out is just an educated guess based on trends. We have been in a three or four year drought so the trend has been little rain. Only in the last several months have we begun to break out of our dry trend. In most parts of metro Atlanta we are still under watering bans.

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Originally posted by DaRebel:
Today I saw the stern of a boat sticking up out of the lake. Seems someone tied their boat up and went away for a while. The bow is tied too well. It, and the dock, is about 6 feet under water.

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And it seems like it was just the other day when I saw somebody bushhoging around there dock. In what looked more like a field than a lake bed.

i went for the 2 Chastains last week and noticed that the walking path that goes from the front of the amputheater, leading towards one of them is now under water.

iworkhere

I went to do maintainence on Buccaneers Den and it was no where to be found. The cavity where is was had apparently been under water in the previous week or so.

I've disabled the cache and probably won't replace it because of the cache nearby which is on much higher ground.

Newton Factory Shoals

See ya on the hunt!

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Originally posted by CharlieP:
It has been so long since we had a really wet spring season, many cachers may not know that the area lakes, Lanier and Allatoona, were developed primarily for flood control and were designed to hold back water well above the normal full lake level ...

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OK, it's my fault ...

CharlieP