Springtime in the Great Smoky Mountains means … rain. Lots of rain. Some years it rains a little almost every day from mid-February through March, other years it comes in periodic deluges. A deluge that comes after a long period of daily rain is the worst: The ground is saturated and soft and a hard rain will wash much of it away.
This causes much damage in areas that have been settled and heavily adapted for human use. Anywhere we remove the natural armor of fallen leaves and cut into the soil we open scars that will allow heavy rains to move that soil around.
I made the little video below as an example of the kind of repair work we do on a regular basis in mountainous areas. I hope you enjoy it.
On especially bad years, the demand for gravel, dump trucks and excavators goes way up, and we need to get on the list well ahead of time – or limp along until the rush settles down and get the work done in early summer. That is what we did the year this was recorded: We don’t normally have so much green grass in March.
This year a good part of our spring precipitation was delivered as snow, which is far less damaging, so we will have only minor repair work to do to drainage ditches and driveways. I do have some balds to fill in and seed, but that must wait until warmer weather. In fact a lot of things are having to wait until warmer weather this year. I do believe something is broken in the weather machine:
We are very much looking forward to the tech’s getting the kinks worked out and the system up and running again!
Thanks for dropping by.
