I grew up in Greeley Colorado. I lived there from 1946 until I went to college in the fall of 1964. In September the corn would be eight to ten feet tall with thick healthy leaves and fat ears filled to the brim with rich kernels of corn. The pinto beans would be just turning yellow in the field preparing for harvest time with pods filled with plump beans.
On September 13, 2013 I saw in the news that the heavy rains measuring 8 to 18 inches over several days in the northern region of Colorado from Boulder north through Fort Collins were taking the tole on swollen rivers at 10 feet over flood stage. The Platte River that always ran quietly through Evans and LaSalle as a bear trickle was now 18 feet deep.
In the time I spend in the Greeley area, I had never encountered any such flooding. One summer after a hail storm I took a ride with my dad to survey the damage. I had watched my dad in sadness as he viewed his hailed crops laying shattered in the rows knowing it was too late in the season to replant. He knew that his work for that year was in vain.
There were times that we gathered in the dark of night at the top of the stairs and looked out the window at the clash of lightening and thunder as the summer storms rolled in. The irrigation pump was venerable to these lightening strikes. We would wait in worry with my mom as we watched our dad drive down the road in driving rain to check on the pump up on the corner.
Over the years the rich farmland of Weld County was improved to maximize ease of farming and crop yields. I remember my dad had been very diligent to grade the land each year with a float to help flatten out the variations in terrain. The forty acres he farmed across the dirt road from our house started out with one portion of the land about the size of a couple footballs fields level with our house. A ditch ran around the perimeter of this smaller parcel. At the edge of the ditch it dropped off about four or five feet to the rest of the 40 acres.
Dad mostly planted hay on this spot as it was easier to harvest on this odd shaped land. As years passed he grew weary of it’s shape and difficulty in irrigating and invested in a project to have this whole piece leveled with the rest of the fields. Now he could easily grow rows of corn or beans from the top of the field to mid-way to the mile line where the forty acres ended.
Other farmers did the same until the farmland around Greeley was nice and flat. On September 13 when the rivers reached their capacity and over flowed the banks, the water moved throughout the farmland like spreading soft butter on a piece of bread.
Fields of corn were covered with three or four feet of water. Bean crops ready for harvest were drenched and stripped under the weight of the water and pressure from the flow of the quick moving current. Cows could be seen huddled together on sparse strips of higher ground. Their hay and grain that they so desperately need soaked under feet of water from the river.
Dairy farmers take pride in their milk production with the latest equipment to milk their cows a couple times a day. Their large herds make this a continuous task the whole day long. If electricity goes out or their corrals flood their whole operation comes to a screeching halt. The tole on animals and farmers is not known at this point until waters recede and damage can be assessed. The direct economic impact will be obvious with homes and businesses damaged or lost to the floods. Higher prices and limited supply of milk products and cheese processed in the new Leprino plant at the edge of Greeley will be felt by all the region. Jobs will be lost or suspended while businesses and farmers regroup and rebuild.
Such devastation over the past week to Colorado is disheartening. On September 9th we received the blast of hail in Lakewood that shredded our flowers and leaves on the trees. A river of hail and water a foot or so deep ran through our front and back yard from the roads on higher ground south of our home. Quite a bit of water splashed into the window wells and ran into the basement to sog up the carpet. As I clean up this slight inconvenience I am humbled by what others are encountering with walls of mud and debris that ran through their homes or raging rivers that uprooted sizable trees or split their homes right in two.
I watched on TV a video clip of one of the farmers tending to his horse by riding it bare back through deep water to bring it to safety. The strength of the people will bring the community together through these darkest times.