(photo credit: sorry I dont know who to credit – on the KSPR facebook page)
I was very fortunate that I was able to grow up on the lakes in Southwest Missouri as a teenager. I lived in several different houses – three below Table Rock Dam on Lake Taneycomo and One above the Dam on Table Rock Lake.
I moved to this area when I was 13. Living on Taneycomo which is below the dam, it was frequent that we heard the sirens – which was a heads up to get out of the way because they were going to release water from the dam. The lake would “run”, fishing would get terrible, the lake would rise, go down and all would be well.
Even though water would be released, it was always released at the bottom of the 200+ foot dam. It’s a power generating dam. By the time I was 16 I had still NEVER seen the gates of the dam open – nodda one of them. I thought..well..maybe they’re just for show….
Then…one day…on the bus ride home our bus driver LeRoy – who also happened to be a Duck Ride tour guide on the side – got word of all the gates opening and asked if we all minded if he took us there to see it before he dropped us off at home…and of course we all yelled with excitement. LeRoy was cool! And I remember standing on the lookout over the dam( which is the mountain on the upper left of the dam in the picture – looking down)…and you could hear the thunder of the water as it crashed thru the gates – which by the way – were barely open…and it rumbled the ground below our feet….Amazing Power…Amazing Picture …and it left an indelible impression in my mind. That must have been sometime back in 1982 or 1983 and I believe LeRoy told us it had been 20 years since ALL the gates had been opened.
Mother Nature has not been so kind to us since….I’ve seen the gates opened many times since then in the last 20 years. Table Rock Lake is usually full at 905′ above sea level and for the first time in record history since the dam has been built in the 50′s the lake is up to 935 and a record 68,000 cubic square foot of water per second is pouring out of the gates…I dont know if you can fathom that…it’s hard to imagine if you’ve not been there or experienced anything like this. I have visions rushing thru my head of when I was a sophmore on the school bus seeing it for the first time…and I can feel the roar under my feet even though there is none.
We’ve been hit with about 13″ of rain this week. Even around my house, there is flooding, the creek below me is flooding, the spring coming out of the cave is gushing…waterfalls are popping up everywhere…some of it’s beautiful…but much of it is destructive.
I took this picture a couple days ago – in the pouring rain…but couldn’t resist the peacefulness of this site…Beauty from the Floods of 2011….
