When the Rains Came… Rock Island Notifying us with, “I’m Back!”

Rock Island is the one place in the world that I chose out of any place I could move to.  As an athlete with no dependence on a location that I had to go to work, I could chose anywhere to live with my family and I chose Rock Island, TN after 8 years of travelling with only an RV, “around world ” trips with my family, etc..

The downside of Rock Island is that the river is not huge and can dry up from July-October.   We have had years where there were dam releases 365 days, and years where we had a drought.  2023 we didn’t see a drop of rain from August to November and we only had 30 days or so of 1 generator (1,500 cfs) of flow until just recently.    FINALLY, we got some snow that stayed until some rains and then another big rain that filled the water table, and soaked the ground and everything is flowing big!

Our first rain melted the snow and the ice with 60+ degree temps and VERY warm rain.    We hit 20,000 CFS and it blew the cold water out of the system and it was followed by a second rain that jacked us up to 20,000 CFS again and put Rock Island back in “Winter Mode”.

Here is what that looked like:

Winter Mode is where we get a storm system coming up from the South and it gets warm, then rains (warm rain) and bumps the flows up hard, and then a cold front follows it that chases the water levels back down slowly until the whole thing repeats.  On average, Rock Island “Spills” 60-100 days per year, meaning that the hydro dam that can handle 3,600 CFS, is overrun and “Great Falls Lake” is about to overflow and they have to pop open “spill gates”.   Those spill gates are on the main dam and it is a good 100+’ from top to bottom.   18 gates that they can open and if all are open and the lake is at the top, 801′ above sea level (my house is at 900′) then the flow will be 100,000 cfs… yes, 100,000 cfs.  Incredible fluxuation of flows from almost ZERO in September to super big flows. Here is a video at 103,000 CFS.

This video is from last night.

The water is now dropping and will get below 3,600 cfs and they will shut the spill gates and we’ll have either “2 Generators” or 3,000-3,500 or if no more rains come, in a month or so we’ll have 1 generator at 1,500 cfs, but that isn’t likely.   February typically gets over 4″ of rain and March over 5″.   Otherwise known as “Life is good” in Rock Island!

Some videos and photos of this epic place…

The Seal Launch at Rock Island is where we got more aggressive and started doing back flips, front flips, etc..   I was able to get the first backflip into a front loop combo here.. unfortunately the rock we took off from fell in.