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2012 Farmland Turned Desert After The Flood

Well after I did the first desert from the 2011 flood account, Boyer Chute finally opened, so I had some access to new areas. These aren't in any real particular order, as the eclipse wasn't the first thing shot. I actually shot the other blowing sand sunset there first and thought it would be a good place to do the eclipse. Well eclipse day I really could have used some blowing sand or clouds to tame the dang sun down.

And like the first other account of this(with more info) here: http://stormandsky.com/2012aftertheflood.html these were taken north of Omaha Nebraska along the river, following the historic 2011 Missouri River flood. This above one here was in Boyer Chute NWR. I'm walking to that far treeline, which is the river, about a mile away. The area of trees over there were all messed up.

Here is an abandoned house near the entrance of the refuge, over a mile from the river. Lots and lots of sand drifting around things here. Cottonwood trees managed alright if their trunks didn't break in the flood. Others are rather dead now.

Destroyed shed behind the house with deep sand around it. Think what it must take to get this much sand out of the river and left in areas. Months of historic flooding.

Rolling deep drifts of sand looking back north at that same shed(right side).

Windy sunset. This should be full of crops. Instead ocean waves of sand.

From the top of this drift to where the field should be, is around 8 feet I'd guess.

People hear brief mentions of the big flood while it is happening and even those mentions were rather few and far between. Most don't hear or see how bad some areas have it now. I mean these images are a year after the flood started. That sand has blown back and forth over and over and really never going much of anywhere else. This irrigation pivot was away from the drifting areas. It think it was about a mile and a half from the river here.

Matt Lauer needs to do one of his "where in the world is Matt Lauer" deals from here. No one is going to guess the middle of a farm field in Nebraska. I still can't wrap my head around how this much sand gets dug up from the river bottom and left behind. Degree of flooding and time of flooding. Like mentioned on that other page. Dams from the 50s regulate the Missouri River. Previous record release rate was 77,000 cfs. This peaked at 160,000 cfs and was 150,000 cfs for months straight. That is mind boggling. Once in a lifetime scenes like what is there now is the result.

It's kinda crazy to me crops are now growing at the south end of this and also the east side toward the river. Then there's this huge stretch of THAT out there. I wonder what the plan is for it. The bill to move it would be too big. Yet it seems it would just blow into the crops if it's not moved. Then you'd have drifts of sand in the corn rows. Will be interesting. They only recently(end of May) disked it and planted around it. It took no time to start growing in the rows. It's going to look damn odd to have tall summer corn around this. Should be interesting.

This was a rather amazing sunset. Every other time I'd try for the wind blown dusty sunset, the winds would die off too much by sunset. Finally got it, more or less, this time.

Nebraska!

I went here for the crazy wind blown sand thing, far too many times. In the process, I took out my Panasonic TM700 2 year old video camera. It's toast. 90% of the time now zooming engages focus. The zoom view gets stuck somewhere and all that changes is the focus for the bad lol. It's so stupid now. Then, I believe it was on the day of the image above, I more or less took out my Canon T2i DSLR. The shutter would get stuck and it would tell me to turn off the camera. It would take doing that and pushing the button several times to get the shutter down again, only for the next shot it to get stuck again. This stuff is better than water at finding ways into your camera. I eventually got it fixed with canned air. It took forever. I'd get it all good to go, clean the sensor and mirror. I'd then blow air in the card slot or the ports and bam, the mirror would have dust/sand all over it again. I eventually would just wipe the mirror off with my finger, then blast air in some port or crack again. Then wipe off the mirror again.

Then there is my 10-22 EF-s widen angle lens. You could really only get it to 12mm or 20mm and it wasn't easy to do that. It's all binded up with sand. The thing is, it surely gets in around the lens, where the lens moves in and out some at the end. If I had a damn filter on the whole time, I'd probably not have had the problem. I've gotten it back to a lot better again. The autofocus doesn't work though, but that's fine as it's dumb on a wide angle anyway and never was used. That focus wheel got stupidly stiff and stuck as well. It's better now though. Anyway, this sand screws things up in a hurry.

So I had no choice but to buy a new video camera. Then it was pretty cool this day(windy) and begging to have video shot of it. Of course I go and take the new video camera right back into it lol. A lot of camera gear pains have gone into these couple desert accounts. The new video camera immediately got dust inside the lens. That crap just goes in any sort of "opening" on the camera and is then stuck inside there, usually collecting on the back side glass of lenses. The next day I went to the camera shop and bought an overpriced 77mm filter and some rain bags. The headaches I'd have avoided had I done that first. I hated that video camera(TM700) to hell anyway, so I don't care it is toast now.

Gee I can't understand how sand and dust is screwing up my gear! And hell the gear is just one thing that pays for this. Eyes and lungs the other. I finally bought some swimming goggles and what a nice difference. The nights after doing this, you always end up with sand burgers, ear burgers and eye burgers. It's messed up just how much can collect in your ears. I've also screwed up my cell phone. Your pockets sit there and collect sand from the air, just like your ears do.

Randy for some scale and my flip flops. Evan was around somewhere. The tallest part was behind me a bit.

It's cool to see how these move in the wind. You get these frequent "avalanches" where the sand lets loose and falls. That of course builds up a new bottom. I must do a time lapse of the textures moving on the top. Has to look alive like water. I have 3 images that are 15-30 seconds apart and you can see them moving in that short of time.

Random corn stalk. I can only imagine what it was thinking when it poked its head out of the ground to see its surroundings.

This picture of newly tilled rows is more recent. They were disked the day I was there. In no time there's green in them now. I imagine it is corn since they seem that far apart. If it is corn, it's going to look so dang bizarre there soon. That would really put the sand photos in their context and place.

This was a damn windy day. Still though, there's not been those 60mph gust types of days since the stuff has gotten really dry. It is going to be highly messed up if that ever happens and it's not after a night of rain.

I keep hoping to get a mean looking line of storms come over the desert area when it is really dry. Instead I get a wet desert and pathetic lines of storms.

A bit of a different area down there. This day was damn windy out of the east, with a line of storms moving north. Video camera is setting basically on top of that buried fence line. That was the day that video camera died.

Randy for some scale on some of these waves of sand.

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