I know we are all nervously anticipating tonight and tomorrow morning’s rain event.
The Latham gauge, it is down to 11 feet.
That means we’ve dropped 12 inches from crest.
Still in flood stage but it’s definitely going in the right direction.
I’ve been a little overwhelmed lately, so it took me till today to contact USGS to have them come out and look at the gauge at the dam.
After the gates got opened all the way, there was a little glitch with the sending unit that was not giving us a nice smooth line on the page.
Had a nice educating talk with Ben. The field tech who lives down by byron.
He looked at it earlier this week. But thought that the construction fence out in the water was the cause of the problem with it, moving around
I got in contact with stenstrum and the city of rockford to see since the construction of that phase was done.If we could get it taken out.
They okayed having it removed today.
He believes taking that tribidity fence out should cure the problem. But he is going to continue to monitor it tonight from his house.
If need be, he said he would be back first thing in the morning to install a new bubbler for the gauge tube.
It’s hard to believe but maintenance is a yearly fee on every gauge.
It completely covers every service call or repair. And if someone was to damage the unit, they replace it free of charge.
I don’t know what it’s gone up to now. But i’m sure it’s at least at the $6000 a year per gauge fee.
The county pays for the one at the dam.
City of Rockford pays for the one at Auburn street.
Village of machesney park pays for the one at latham.
And they are very good about monitoring the gages, but occasionally, if one has bad readings, I immediately call them when I notice it.
I learned a valuable lesson over the weekend while hooking a tree up to pull out at my dock.
Poison, ivy or poison oak still survives underwater.
I swear that stuff can jump five feet and stick onto my arms.
Nothing a little dose of pregnisone won’t take care of.
At least we were all blessed with a couple of nice, warm sunny days to try and take our mind off of sump pumps, boat docks and backyards flooded.
Hang in there every one we’ll all get through this. As soon as mother nature lets us.