2016-March 14, Lake Bistineau flooding

On March 9th, 2016 the area where I live got about 20 inches in 30 hours.  Some places nearby got more and some places got less but where we were that's what we had to deal with.  I live on a bayou and because of that I was greatly concern.  I kept a close eye on the bayou and the weather.  The thing that concerned me was with all that rain in such a short period time is the fact it didn't have time to soak into the ground and thus it was run off which lead to a lot of flash flooding in the area.  I knew it was really bad when I heard they had to close down I-20 in Bossier and Webster parishes due to water coming onto the roads.  All that water had to go some where and its ended up in our lakes and reservoirs.
     My spouse and I also have some property on Lake Bistineau and had heard about all the flooding there.  Our neighbors were telling us they had never seen the lake so high. We were concerned and on March 14th the roads had been open again in areas and due to daylight savings time we figured we had enough time to get down to the lake and back during daylight hours.
    We knew from the news we couldn't go our normal way since those road were still closed.  That didn't really surprise us since last June they got closed to flooding too.  Here's a link to that post.
http://rockhoundingaround.blogspot.com/2015/06/6-14-2015-camp-and-lake-bistineau.html

Here's the one image I wanted to share with you from that period of time.

water over the Lake Bistineau dam June 14, 2015

You can see the water clearly over the dam.  At that time everyone was amazed at how high the water had gotten.  We were impressed too and thought that was the maximum it would get.  But we wrong about that.
(Here's an image of the same area with the flooding during that period of time. )

This is taken from the same area as the very first one, and you can see how much higher the water is now.
We had marveled over June flood because 7 months earlier the lake was at a low. After this things went back to normal and I really regret not getting pictures of that like I had in March when things were at a normal stage for the lake, so you can see how much things have gone up.  But I do have images of when its at a normal level..  http://rockhoundingaround.blogspot.com/2015/03/lake-bisteneau-on-3-28-2015.html

And I have the images of when it was dry last Nov 2014.http://rockhoundingaround.blogspot.com/2015/05/lake-bisteneau-nov-28-2014.html

Now we can't get over it's even higher than it was last June and back then everyone was surprised by the height of that. It's just so amazing - UNBELIEVABLE!
I'm going to show some pictures of the flooding compared to the drought just so you can get an idea of the magnitude of the water we're dealing with.

First off when we drove up to the house we couldn't even get to the house due to the inlet being so high.

But our neighbor has a road to his place that is on the other side of our house that we knew we could probably take to get to our place since we could see it above the water when we looked over at it.
So we tried it and was able to finally get onto our property.  By using a stairway that connects our places. 

Here's another view of the inlet being so full. 

 This is what it looks like when it was dry

 

But what we were mostly concern with was to see if the house had flooded and so far it hasn't.

 Here's the image we're usually looking at when we sit on the porch.
In  this one you can't even see the water. but look at the tree that has the branches close to the ground and the bush.

 Here's the same tree and water up to the bush.

 The house is dry but I couldn't say the same about the boat house.  We've had it flooded before but never like this.
Here's some of the images when it was high and dry.
 

 These are the trees that are to the left of the boathouse.

 And here's what it looks like now.  This I had to take from the neighbors road.

Here it is again, cropped and enlarged.

Here's how my neighbors boathouses look.
When it was dry you can't see the boat house but you can see the dock.

Now here's how it is zoomed in through cropping

And here's my other neighbors boat house that shows how bad things really are.
 Look how dry it was in November

and now.

For my own sake I did take a 32 second video of this area.

Like I said its unbelievable...

6-14-2015 Camp and Lake Bistineau Flooding

I started this post for 6-14-2015 and never did finish it, I thought I had. Well I'm finally done with it and have post dated it so it's still in its sequence. 
My spouse and I own property on Lake Bistineau.  With all the flooding on the Red River it wasn't surprising the waters backwashed into Lake Bistineau's watershed. When that happens the water can't drain over the dam and then it ends up building up in the lake.  This has happened before since we've own the property but it is a very rare occurrence. We went to check out the property and wasn't surprised to see the water at the levels that it was.

This is the dam/ spillway of Lake Bistineau.
  The road over it.

 This is the actual spillway area and you can see the water is higher than the spillway/ dam.  The image was taken heading east on Hwy 154 and is looking south

 This is headed west on Hwy 154 and is looking north.  This is the eastern shore

 Typical view of the lake in this area.  The one thing that is noticeable is the water is up to the branches, usually there is a foot or more difference.

Now for the pictures from the camp area.
We have a small inlet area that usually just has very little water going through it  as you can see its pretty full now. 

 This is looking across our property to the neighbors boat house

 This is looking at the other neighbors boat house you can see the road is covered to get to the dock area.

And this is looking towards our boat house.  You can't see the boathouse very well but you can see the railing and how high the water is on the railing plus you can see we have an observation deck and you can get a feeling of how high the water is based on the stairs to the deck and also the water along the fence line.

 This is just looking out our porch and the area we normally view.

 Another view of it but with the tree in it for reference.

 I just like this one because I did think it was pretty.

 I like this one because you can see the slope of the land in this area.

I couldn't get over how much things had risen since last summer when things were so down the year before. Here's the post I did on 3-28-2015  http://rockhoundingaround.blogspot.com/2015/03/lake-bisteneau-on-3-28-2015.html  .  In it you can see what it was like both when its down and at a normal level.
I'm going to include some of the images from November 28 2014 so you can see what the lake looks like when it's way down.
This shows my neighbors boat dock with no water around it. 

 I liked this one because this is normally an inlet with water in it.

 Here the dogs were playing in what is normally lake bed.  Our boat house is in the background.

 another view of the dry inlet

 And here's a good view of our boat house with no water near it.

 This is looking under our dock.  The lake was down at least 10 feet.

It always amazes me when you see mother nature acting this way.

.

Lake Bistineau on 3-28-2015

Last November we visited the lake and it was so dry.  It's been a wet spring and so we decided to go see the Lake again.  I was so happy to see it had filled up again. 

My dogs just having so much fun running around.

This is how the area looked in November

   This the inlet that was so dry.      And over here you can see the water in it.


My dogs were so eager to be able to go out and play in the field, but every once in the while they had to come check in.  Then they couldn't wait until I said okay to play.

 Here's the area in the front yard filled in with water.  This is how it normally looks.  .

 The same direction in November

  Here's the boat dock at the end of March

The boat dock in Nov.

Last Nov. I could walk under the boat house.

In March there is no way I could.

This was looking from the boat dock in November
 
I thought this was a pretty tree  and have taken some pictures of it.
 
Here's that tree in November

 

Here's some more to give you a better idea of how the water has risen.since November 2014.

 The water in March 2015.  You can't even see that barrel anymore.

I guess because the lake changes so much it makes it so interesting to go see it.  You never know what to expect.

With all the rain we've been getting I'm now appreciative that the lake was so low.  It makes me less worried about our area flooding.