Thor’s Day
Honoring the God of Thunder Today
I used to be a treasure hunter.
My Grandparents would turn me loose to wander all over the dunes of South Padre Island, Texas, with a shovel and a poodle while they relaxed at the house and probably admired their own wisdom; “that’ll wear him out,” they probably thought.
From the house set on sand at 3401 Gulf Boulevard I wandered far and wide digging holes as deep as I could in the back of the dunes. Searching, always searching. Toby, my trusty poodle? He would dig his own holes as well. But I never found treasure on South Padre Island, so it’s still there somewhere.
I was sitting right here at this keyboard last night, working on my lame YouTube Channel, optimizing it to try and breathe some life into videos that are approaching 20-years-old and newer. It is the most boring thing in the world, but it has been extremely revealing along the way.
Last night, while digging holes into the Texas Fly Caster YouTube Channel, my shovel actually hit something solid, as solid as any treasure chest.
Remember the drought that was in the early part of the last decade? I haven’t looked at the graphs, but I think it ran from about 2012 to 2015. But in 2015 the heavens opened up. God decided we had learned our lesson and God let the rains come to Texas in the Spring of 2015. Little did God know that man could even f that blessing up somehow – as well.
Last night’s digging revealed to me the actual event that caused all the damage to the Elm Fork of the Trinity River, damage that forever changed that stretch of water into the fish-less stretch of the River we have today.
The treasure I found is a video of the actual event USACE would probably like to forget. It is the epic release of water at the Ray Roberts Lake Dam that caused all the wood to be washed out off the shores and into the River, clogging it for eternity and a day. As I watched this video, I remembered: The ground shook, the sound was deafening and people brought their kids to see it, stand there and just stare at it. This is it. This is the release by the US Army Corps of Engineers that caused all the damage to the Greenbelt, damage that we still suffer the consequences from – to this very day in 2024. This is that rosetta stone.
May 24, 2015 – Memorial Day Weekend Dam Release
Of course to you it looks just like another release at a dam somewhere, but look closely if you have time. The water release is at the limit. It appears wide open. They may have left a “bit” of a twist closed, to save the bridge at the other park about a mile away – the Trinity there was just under the lip and it was ripping so hard the bridge would have been gone in moments if it were to hit squarely dead-on with the force of about 8-thousand cfs. across that narrow. Unless you saw it in person, you will just have to imagine feeling the ground shaking and the deafening noise.
Thanks for watching this video, and for taking the time to read. Have a great extended weekend. Maybe we can stop the rain for a little while?
Category: Causes, Denton Trinity River Greenbelt Corridor, Fly Fisher Health and Wellness, Life Observed, North Texas, Science and Environmental
