We’re looking at four (maybe five?) straight days of rain here in Asheville. Yes, North Carolina gets hurricanes – but we’re also 400 miles inland and up in the mountains. It is an odd place to be when this kind of weather hits.
Loads of rain isn’t uncommon for Asheville. When we moved here in April of 2018 the city got like ten inches of rainfall. Everything was wet all of the time and we discovered how quickly drenching rains can appear out of nowhere, saturate your outfit for the day, and vanish into sunlight before you even know what hits you.
Springs and summers would bring a welcome rain shower in the mid afternoons. Just enough to break up the day and remind you how there isn’t much point to working anymore. The passing storm would cool things off for a bit, only to coat the city in a sticky humidity that would hang around for the rest of the evening. This is the sensation that inspires one to pursue cold beer.
Before long we would secure a nice house with a bit of landscaping right in town. My wife and I, our two dogs, and a new roommate – the rain, for it became a factor to just about all of our decisions. Will we need an umbrella? How about a poncho? When the downpours started, we would watch the spring creek that trickled through our property swell into a river that slowly carved away at its banks. What looked nice when we signed the papers ended up being something to reckon with year in and out.
For reference, even before Hurricane Helene has hit the coast of Florida, Asheville has received 12 inches of rain during August 2024 – 7 of which fell over the night of the 25th. More is on the way.
The erosion, horrifyingly, causes sinkholes to randomly open up around town. Ever since watching Dante’s Peak I’ve fostered a reasonable fear of being buried alive and sinkholes lend well to this phobia. Most of the sinkholes show up in parking lots – water from healthy rains leaks through and runs off with the dirt that supported the pavement. A hole appears and grows and the yellow caution tape lives at its borders until someone can figure out who is going to pay to have it filled in.
Knowing my luck, this entire town will get swallowed into a sinkhole one day. I mean, we’re already almost there.
On the home front, I am experimenting with ways to prevent our soil from totally washing out:
We have a large porch that is slowly sinking thanks to the persistently muddy soil and the frequent flooding of the creek.
A lot of rainwater comes down the driveway, carrying all manner of silt, rock, and debris with it.
A drainage ditch bisects our rose garden. This ditch lovingly irrigates the roses. It also waters every other possible seed it finds and is eventually choked with weeds.
Every spring a crew comes out to clean up the lot and handle the excessive overgrowth (one edge of our property is along a forest, and the forest isn’t known to respect boundaries) and put down a ton of mulch to, in theory, prevent weeds from growing. They always find a way. They’re bastards like that.
Mulch is great and plentiful in these parts (as quickly as trees grow, they also fall down, a lot), but it isn’t terribly effective on sloped ground or anywhere that washes out. For this, we will need stone – riprap.
The goal, over time, is to use erosion to our advantage and slightly divert the spring creek to flow away from our house. A riprap border along one side of the creek will effectively rebuild the bank on that side. As the border grows, the water will divert and slowly carve a new path.
Or, if it keeps raining like this, it will carve a new path for itself rather quickly.
I’ll update this post with pictures of the progress (or degradation) as it comes.