Yellowstone River Flooding

On Monday Dad and I went flying in the T-craft. We were amazed by how high the river was. This is because of all they are getting to the southwest. We told Mom, and she wanted to go see it, so we decided to take the Bearhawk. Dad, Mom, Jessi and I all got in and Dad hand-propped it (low battery) and got it started (I was surprised he was able to hand-prop an 0-540). Then we went flying. I won't do too much describing since the pictures speak for themselves.

This is the Intake Diversion dam. This is where the water for the canal comes in. They have spent 40 million dollars trying to fix something that doesn't need it. All to put in fish screens. And now the water is only a few feet from washing it all downstream. Take a look at the picture. You can see the old intake on the left.


These cows aren't in a very good spot.


The 'Fishing Rock'.


Flooded fields.


More pictures of the flooding.








Check out this landslide. The whole hill slid down quite a ways.


DJ

New calf

Yesterday, Angel, my Holstien milk cow, had a heifer calf that is three quarters milk cow. To our surprise, she is whiter than either parent. I think we will call her Ivory, or Ivy for short.

If you look closely, you can tell the black hair is flecked with white, so what black she has will probably turn out to be more of a blue roan color like her older sister, Misty.

Here are our other three calves, Snowball(the big black bull), Molly(The black and white heifer), and Elf(The little brown heifer.)

Here is a close up of a dandelion.

And we also have tulips and daffodils blooming.




Jessi

More Rain

We got 2.5 inches of additional precipitation in the past week. That brings our total rainfall for the month over 7 inches. Over ten inches since the first of April. This is nearly unheard of up here. Anyway, here are the pictures.

These two pictures were taken on Friday when it was really raining.


We got showers off and on today. Looking towards Indian Prayer Rock.


Looking west.


Looking towards Blue Mountain you can see the grass is really growing.

DJ

Pictures from Today

Today we put out SweetPro (a mineral supplement) for our livestock. I took a few pictures of the cattle.

A picture of some of the cattle over on Cottonwood Creek with Blue Mountain in the background.


A cute calf.


We also went to the river and put SweetPro out for the steers.


They are looking pretty good.



The road to the river is really bad. It got bad when the snow melted and hasn't gotten any better. If you don't believe me look at the pictures below.


Yeah, that was the road.


We found some flowers on the way home.


Because of the rain some of the steeper hillsides slid off. Mudslides in Montana, who would have thought...

DJ

Rain (4.6 inches!)

We got 4/10ths of an inch on Sunday night. It really started raining Monday evening. There was a lot of lightning. By around 10:00 P.M. we had 2.6 inches. By Tuesday morning we had over 3.5 inches. It rained throughout the morning and started to taper off by evening.

All and all we got 4.6 inches of rain in less than two days. I never remember seeing this much in the rain gauge. It is really muddy. The ground was already pretty saturated before we got the rain. Now it is very saturated. It didn't run the creeks as much as I thought it would though, but it still took out some fence in the creeks. This brings our total rainfall amount up to around 8 inches and that isn't counting the snow. That is like 2/3 of our average annual rainfall.

The proof.



The cattle-guard was full of water.


We were able to get up and check cattle Tuesday morning between storms. Luckily for you, I took the camera.

Looking towards the reservoir.


The heifers weren't too bothered about the rain.


The rain filled some reservoirs.


The three-year-olds. (You might have to enlarge the photo to see them.)


Blue Mountain was covered in clouds.


Today we flew again. I didn't take the big camera, but I did get some decent pictures.

You can see the cows on the far side of the reservoir.


Look closely in this picture. See the snowdrift? Today marks 6 months of having snow on the ground. We first got snow on November 11th and it never did completely melt off. Then we got more and more and...


In the center of the picture there is a pile of about fifteen calves. (Click to enlarge.)


Down on Cottonwood Creek.


The steers were happily grazing at the river.


The Yellowstone River is really high from all the rain.


DJ

Blizzard Aftermath

I don't know if I should title this 'Blizzard Aftermath' or 'Mayday'.

The power went out.
The phone went out.
The heifers went out.
The steers went out.

The blizzard let up around 2:00 PM Saturday. At times visibility was below a hundred yards (probably closer to a hundred feet). Saturday around noon we lost power. It is still out. We hooked the big generator up so now we have some electricity. We called the electric company and they said that they are hoping to get our power up tomorrow afternoon. I heard on the radio Williston is still without power. There is an estimated 20,000 without power in North Dakota and Montana as of this morning.
After hooking the generator up to open the hangar door, Dad and I flew Sunday morning, the first of May, to discover the carnage. Just about everyone had cows and calves on someone else's land because the wind blew them into the fences (When I say blew, I mean they were trying to get away from the wind and eventually went through a fence, not that the wind picked them off their feet and sent them flying). Just about everyone lost some calves. The snow drifted up in the corner one of our pastures allowing the heifers to walk right over the fence so we had to get them in. The steers bunched up against a gate and broke the gate-stick; therefore, they got out. All and all, it could have been worse. Especially if it had lasted more than 12 hours. It still did a lot of damage in the time it had though.

You know it is windy when...


Icicles are at a forty-five degree angle.


These were taken Saturday evening. You can see the ice still stuck to the deck.



As I mentioned, the heifers got out. The wind blew them about two and a half miles. Luckily they wandered through an open gate into a small pasture. So on Sunday morning we loaded three horses in the trailer and took them to where the heifers were. Mom drove in front of them with the trailer. Here is a picture of the road-grader plowing snow.


Here is a picture of Dad bringing some heifers back.


Jessi, DJ, and Dad.


Taking them up the road.


They wanted to race Mom instead of letting her pass.


Yeah, that wasn't supposed to happen. They went through a open gate instead of straight down the road.


Mom and Dad went down to the river with the four wheelers and got the steers in. Most of them had already gone back though because they wanted to get back to the hayfield.

As you can see, there are still several drifts. They weren't here before the blizzard.


Dad, DJ, and Jessi.


The yard is green though.



Even the pasture is green.


But there are still some pretty bad drifts. Some are easily 8 to 10 feet deep.


DJ