Reflected Skies

Sometimes I get a picture or two I just really like.  These are of an ordinary location, the flooded lake along Wodehouse Creek at Sideroad 7A, but the lighting was so good I thought they were worth a post.  I've got a dozen almost identical shots, at different seasons and over several years, but none with reflected skies like this!

Shot partly into sun facing south, this picture is a little darker than the next.

This one was shot with the sun behind me.  And the water surface is partly blurry a bit because there's a thin skim of ice.

But I wouldn't want you to get the wrong impression that Grey County April skies are always (or even frequently) blue!  These two show the more typical grey skies we've been having recently.

They were taken in Memorial Park in Meaford this afternoon.  Water levels are still high.

****

Mrs. FG had 'Quilting Time' in Meaford today, so I went along just so I could go for a proper walk - the trails and the woods around here are so wet and sloppy it's almost hopeless!  And I did get for a good hour-long brisk walk on a good trail which made it enjoyable.  And we got to drop in and visit our new-born great-niece as well.  Bonus!

Linking to:

Flooded Fences

Driving around the past few days I've seen a lot of flooded fences (and roads, and bridges...).  Now we've had snow, and the ponds are frozen or at least frozen slush, and the landscape is white.  But four days ago it looked like this.

Today it's been snowing on and off all day here, so it's definitely white out there, but we didn't get the 10-15 cm. in the forecast.  I think March tricked us this year by giving us some nice warm days too early, and getting our expectations up.

Because when I went back and checked my blog from past Aprils, this weather seems pretty typical; some years have even been worse.   In April 2011, I wrote about the crazy weather, from working in the garden to plunging temperatures and then snow.

In 2012 we got 20" of snow on April 24th!  And that was after the snowblower and snow tires had all been put away!

2013 apparently wasn't very snowy in April, but reading April's posts in 2014 sounds like this year!  The landscape was still white on Apr. 15th, and I wrote about waterfalls and flooded fences.  Actually had some better wet fence pictures that year I think.

Last year we had only a little snow in April, but it did snow on our Daffodils in mid-April.

The above picture would be all white today, but last Saturday the water was washing over this road I drove down.  I got out and checked to be sure there was no channel newly eroded across the road but hidden beneath the water, and then drove on.

But looking to the right, this was the flooded field, with the flooded driveway into the farm just showing on the left.  A lot of people will be glad when this snow vanishes and the water goes down.

****

I've been getting pretty slack in my walking, between deep cold, rain, and ice in March, being sick for two weeks after that, and just being lazy, I'm falling behind.  I did get out for two good 2 hour+ hikes last week before this snow returned, but then our poor dog Roxie blew out her knee racing too fast around a corner.  Suddenly I have no need to get up and go for a walk every morning as I usually do.  By today I was feeling downright twitchy, so I pushed myself and got out for a walk in the woods and another on the trail at the Ski Club, and I feel much better for it!  I'm gonna have to re-activate my willpower!

Linking to:

Inglis Falls

After photographing Eugenia and |Hogg's Falls, we headed off on a drive to Owen Sound to see Inglis Falls.  We had heard that it was roaring too, and once we got there we thought that there had maybe been more rain in that area than we even had here.  It was overwhelming!

The falls was thundering like I have never seen it before, a complete torrent everywhere!

I started at the dam just above the falls, where the dam was completely overwhelmed by water roaring underneath us.

Under the bridge it went, and over the lip of the falls.

Looking at the falls below, it's hard to believe that there could be so much water.

And the stream down the gorge below was simply white with a torrent of water.

I'm not sure that the two 'slower' pictures of water I tried show the water as well as the 'fast' pictures when there is this much water flowing, and the whole atmosphere is full of spray.  The water is so white that there is no contrast to show up.

Just for comparison, I'd better show you a picture of typical mid-summer lower flow, when you can actually climb up the rocks if you're adventurous.

  

I tried another little video, enjoy, especially the sound track!

Spring Arrives in Grey County!

We awoke to the joyous view of spring here in Grey County, with a beautiful 6" of white over all the landscape!  Grey Highlands weather was wiping away those warmish days and emerging flowers under a blanket of fresh snow!

The landscape is back to white!

 In Meaford the waves were rolling in and the sky was blue.

But the sediment-laden Bighead River was still pouring into the Bay, with blue water only to be seen in the distance.

The wetlands were still very wet, but had a different look when iced in white.

The water has subsided a little here, and the sediment is gone, but the water is still high.

And those brave, hardy Pasque Flowers are still blooming, sticking up above last night's snow.

Our Crocus,Snowdrops and Iris have all disappeared below the beautiful blanket of white, but the Pasque Flowers bloom on.
That's our world today!

Linking to:

Our World Tuesday

Hogg's Falls

The second waterfall I went to check out on Friday was Hogg's Falls.  It's easy to access and nearby, and it was ROARING!  Not quite the same contrast as at Eugenia Falls, which is usually such a small trickle, because Hogg's Falls always looks good.  But Friday after the heavy rain it had more water than I've ever seen!

This is actually the Boyne River, the main tributary of the Beaver, but since the original Beaver River was largely diverted into the power plant, the Boyne is actually larger than the Beaver River which normally comes over Eugenia Falls today.

There was water everywhere!  Even the Bruce Trail from the parking lot to the falls was a running stream.

The river was higher, wider and faster than normal as you head down the trail.

 By the time you're just above the falls, the roar is deafening.

And over it goes!  I've sometimes been able to stand out on the limestone past that tree to take pictures - not today!

Just a huge loud version of Hogg's Falls.  With the bright white foam below, and the dark trees, it's quite a challenge to handle the contrast in these pictures.

I certainly wasn't about to climb down to get a picture from below (which you can do quite easily in the summer), but I did creep down a little further carefully to capture another view.

The water was filling the gorge below as it headed down the valley.

Here's a short video to impress you with the noise!

****

And here we're back to winter.  I was going to share a nice picture of our tiny bright blue Iris which were blooming brightly yesterday, but when I went out with the camera this morning, they had been done in by the overnight snow.  It's snowing now, and there are 10-15 cm (4-6") forecast overnight.  Even as a lover of winter, I'm ready for this to be over!

Flooding in the Valley

Before I go on sharing pictures of the several waterfalls I've been to, I should tell you about the local flooding going on.  It's not much compared to places that sometimes suffer major floods, but it's certainly disrupting some peoples' lives here!

As I said yesterday, after 3-4" of rain in four days, the rivers are running high.  The gates of the Lake Eugenia dam had to be opened to keep homes from flooding, but that sent extra water down the Beaver River - a LOT of extra water!  In several places roads have been closed, with water over the road.  Notice the stream on the left hand side of this picture, normally a little trickle in the ditch.

One of the biggest local impacts has been washing out the bridge into the Beaver Valley Ski Club.  This is a double-lane bridge, over a normally quite small branch of the river.  But now the water is backed up against the upstream edge of the bridge, flowing overtop and loosening pavement.

It's dropping back down into the river in the gap between the two lanes of the bridge, but it's what's going on underneath that will determine the structural integrity of the bridge  - once the water goes down enough that they can assess it.  People live in here, so they are ferrying them to their homes by ATV from the top of the ski hill.

The river further downstream has totally flooded the golf course at Talisman Mountain Springs Inn, the golf course currently in the process of being restored.  Water is flowing across the access road.  And nearby, 2 or 3 houses look flooded; those are the people probably suffering the most.

Lots of farm fields like this are flooded, and the weather is dull dark and grey.

This is the weather late this afternoon; yes we are back to snow, an east wind blowing it in my fce in this picture.  The forecast is for snow and freezing temperatures all week.  And small spring puddles that form in fields like this every year are now small spring lakes!

LOTS of flooded fences around; luckily the barn here is up higher than this low spot in the pasture.

And there are lots of little streams that usually don't really exist, coming down the very steep slopes of the upper valley.  It's no wonder the river itself is over its banks!

The Ordovician Shale layer that forms the lower slopes in the valley erodes easily, so the turbid colour in this stream is not from farm fields, but from forested slopes where the torrent of runoff is cutting into the shale.

****

I would have been out getting more pictures today, but I was off to a Bruce Trail Conservancy meeting of all the club Stewardship Directors (I'm the volunteer who does that here in the valley).  I was pleased to learn that our club is probably doing as well as any in terms of moving ahead with new initiatives, as well as getting all our reports in annually.  Meanwhile, Mrs. FG was off to what she thought was a rug hooking show in Owen Sound.  Turned out it wasn't a show, but a 'Hook-in' where the ladies gathered to hook together.  But she knew a number of them who are also in the Quilting Guild, so she had a nice visit with a number of the hookers.

And here's a video, just for the sound track. Local readers will appreciate this, 'cause it's such a contrast with the usual trickle over the bedrock - Eugenia Falls at full throttle!

Water, Water Everywhere

After between 3 and 4" of rain in two big storms this week, there's water everywhere, ditches full, a bridge or two washed out, a few houses flooded, and the rivers running like crazy.  I've been out capturing pictures, and of course where do I go - waterfalls!

Eugenia Falls was roaring like Niagara today; I heard it as soon as I opened the car door.  The rain has flooded the lake, threatening cottage homes, so the opened the gates on the dam.  The result is a torrent of water like before 1914 when the dam was first built!

The first viewpoint itself was actually flooded which left me shooting through the trees on the edge of the cliff.  The roar was just immense.  Local readers will appreciate how unusual this is.

I got a few pictures through the trees before walking to the second viewpoint, where I usually take photos of this falls.

But this viewpoint was flooded too.  |I did my best with this one, but had to sneak around to get the views below.

Never in all my years of coming here have I ever seen this much water and mist, and heard so much noise!

This must have been what it was like before the dam and power plant were built 100 years ago.

Before leaving the village I drove out to the dam to confirm the gates were still open.  The roar here was as big as at the falls.

In contrast, this was the trickle going over the falls about three weeks ago.  Mind you, they were letting the lake fill to summer levels at this point, so it's particularly low, but it still shows how unusual today's roaring falls is.\\