The last time Walnut Creek flooded was five years before in August of 2021. Since that flood, which was the high water mark for my tenure here, the creek has not left it's banks even in the wake of Hurricane Helene, which triggered so much destructive flooding in the area. Particularly hard hit was the town of Marshall located along the French Broad River just three miles away. So, after living here for twenty years, and having weathered a number of floods over that time, I felt fairly secure with my location relative to Walnut Creek. After the flood that occurred on the evening Of July 28th, 2026 I have a very different perspective on my situation.

With past storms, flood warnings and weather updates were issued on an hourly basis, but this flood came without warning as a thunder storm, perched over the Walnut Creek Valley for only a matter of hours, dumped torrents of rain into the watershed. A severe thunderstorm and a tornado warning were in place so I was taking precautions, but even as the creek began to rise, I never guessed at what was coming. An hour and a half later, with the basements of the house and studio flooding and the water still rising, I was considering moving to higher ground.

But as I paced from house to building and back again, trying to decide a course of action, the rain started to let up, from a torrential downpour to a steady shower.

The advantage of my location on Walnut Creek, only a few miles from the source, is that once the rain lets up, the water begins to recede. Further downstream and especially on a river water will continue to rise after the rain has stopped as numerous tributaries continue to feed into it. As I watched anxiously, the water began to pull back, as evidenced by a debris line at the high water mark, and in less than an hour Walnut Creek was back within its banks.

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By my estimate from the image below of the sycamore tree behind the workshop, the high water mark was about eighteen inches above the Flood of 2021. Under normal conditions the water level is about five feet below this as can be seen in the image to the right taken a year earlier during peaceful times. The red line I added illustrates the high water mark on the sycamore tree.

Pinched between the hillside and the studio, the water was especially forceful as it rushed toward the bridge where Walnut Creek Road passes over the creek, carving a path through dense brush and flattening a sturdy, young walnut tree on the creek bank. The dark area that the creek channels toward in the photograph is the shadow beneath the bridge, which is about twenty yards downstream. Logs and other large objects made dull clanging noises as they rammed the side of the bridge, while water and smaller debris splashed onto the roadbed. There was some concern that the bridge might fail, and fortunately that did not happen.

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By the time the water receded, it was getting dark and I was exhausted, so it wasn't until the next morning that I surveyed the damage. The worst blow was the destruction of the garden, my pride and joy, which was at it's peak for the growing season.

Only one of the five raised bed frames remained intact, the tallest and the first one I built, ten years ago. Three had been washed away, a fourth was broken apart in place. All three compost bins were gone. Sections of them can be seen floating away in the foreground of the image to the right and in the photograph at the top of the page.

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Most of the garden plants in the perimeter beds were uprooted and washed away, most notably the cucumber plants. Making dill pickles is my midsummer passion and fortunately I had canned twenty-two quarts, half my usual quota, before disaster struck. The cucumbers were in the far left perimeter bed and the morning after in the photo below there are only fragments of green remaining. The tomato plants were crammed into a hopelessly tangled pile of tomato cages and vines, and pepper plants were half pulled up by the roots and flattened into a pile in the far right corner of the garden.

As bad as the loss of the garden plants was, the worst part for me was the loss of the soil. I had worked to build it up for over ten years with purchased soil, peat moss, and hundreds of pounds of compost such that it was so fine I mostly worked it with just my bare hands. In the forty-five minutes that the garden was inundated with water, ten years of effort was washed away. In the background of the photo Walnut Creek can be seen flowing, still high and muddy, with soil from upstream.

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The flooding of the house basement left a layer of mud and pools of water to deal with, but it was a minor issue compared to the flooding of the studio crawl space. A few years before, I spent considerable time cleaning out the crawl space, and covering the dirt floor with plastic to keep the moisture level down. The morning after the flood, the crawlspace was filled with a foot of muddy water and debris. There were even some unfortunate fish, swimming slowly along the surface of the water that had poured into what would be a death trap.

Overall the unexpected flash flood upended my summer plans and created additional work for months ahead. When Hurricane Helene was approaching with all the warnings and dire predictions, I expected at the least to sustain flooding and damage to the degree this recent flood inflicted. Yet there was so little damage with my immediate surroundings that until I made contact with other people and learned the scope of the disaster, I thought that the forecasters had miscalled it with Helene. But I was just lucky that time, and this time I wasn't.

A weather system that didn't even warrant a proper name, that was not predicted to cause flooding, and described afterward as just a local, severe thunderstorm, caused extensive damage, and brought me to the point where I was considering abandoning the house and moving to higher ground.

But it could have been much worse. After all, my dog and I were still intact, and my house and studio were still intact. I just got a small sample of what it was like for those people who did lose so much to Helene, a helpless feeling of watching your world coming apart, and there's nothing you can do about it except get out of the way. Thinking about it from that perspective made me feel sorry for the victims of Helene all the more and to feel sorry for myself all the less.

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A friend told me that after Helene she will never quite feel the same about the the French Broad River, and that's the way I feel about Walnut Creek now. If the local, severe thunderstorm would have hovered over the watershed another hour or two, everyone might have been swept out of this valley.

But I have no plans to move to higher ground yet. The garden will be put back together before next spring and the basements will be cleaned up.

Creeks and rivers have their own rules. Since I choose to inhabit a floodplain and enjoy the benefits of living so close to moving water, I'm bound to live by those rules, and from time to time, pay my dues.