A reporter, a camera and a flood

The N.C. Department of Transportation warned motorists of high water around the bend where Grants Creek was flowing over Hollywood Drive outside of Spencer. Photo by Mark Wineka, Salisbury Post

The amazing thing about water is how fast it appears and how quickly it goes away.

With trepidation — never give a camera to a reporter — I ventured out Monday morning to record in pictures some of the overnight flooding that was enough to call off schools in Rowan County.

It's comical, I'm sure, to see me on the roadside with a camera to my eye. Some horses along Seventh Street Extension thought so, as I attempted to show the floodwaters creeping toward them.

Either the horses weren't cooperating, or I wasn't in the right spot, but you won't be seeing any horses-in-the-flood pictures.

My morning travels also took me to Kelsey-Scott Park, where it was funny to see the disc golf baskets barely poking above the water. I took some obligatory pictures of flooding at Salisbury Country Club, along the Salisbury Greenway and at the Catawba College sports fields.

When you see Catawba's softball, lacrosse, soccer and football practice fields looking like a new Great Lake, you can't imagine any games being played there for months.

Athletic Director Dennis Davidson told me not to worry, even predicting that the water would disappear from the softball field by day's end.

"It's amazing how fast it recedes," he said.

Someone else took pictures of the flooding at East Innes Street near Interstate 85. Only 100-year rain events are supposed to be enough to flood that area, meaning over the past couple of years we've covered two centuries.

I love time travel.

I also drove outside of Spencer to see if I could get a photograph of a flooded Hollywood Drive. Before I reached the spot where Grants Creek was flowing over the road, I stopped to take a picture of a sign that warned of "High Water."

As with the horses, I was getting a bit adventurous with the camera.

Beyond the sign, a red car drove into the picture frame — something I appreciated because it would help inform a reader that it was indeed a road that was flooded up ahead.

I had no idea that Post colleague Steve Huffman was in that car with his wife, Meg.

Steve stopped the car beside me.

"You're going to be in the paper, by the way," I told them, showing unusual confidence that any of my pictures would find their way into publication.

After lunch, I accepted Jim Behmer's offer to drive me to the city's raw water pump station and two waste treatment plants. Yes, I have no life, but the kind of flooding we experienced Monday often concerns the water-sewer folks.

"It would be interesting to see the latest drought map," said Behmer, director of Salisbury-Rowan Utilities.

On what became a beautiful, balmy day for late January, he piloted his Ford Escape over the greater Salisbury-Spencer-East Spencer area.

In a nutshell, the "bugs" are working at the Grants Creek and Town Creek waste treatment plants. All the extra water flowing into the sewer system hasn't compromised the biological processes necessary for sewage treatment.

The bigger concern is the raw water pump station. The Yadkin River won't crest until this afternoon, and it's already flooded around the pump station and Hannah Ferry Road.

But Behmer, like Davidson, told me not to worry. If the pump station would quit for some reason, the city has at least 28 million gallons at the ready in its reservoirs. In the winter months, the utility's water usage only averages about 7 million gallons a day.

Behmer later drove me by Salisbury Mobile Home Park, which had been flooded earlier in the morning. By the time we arrived, the swift Town Creek waters had receded, leaving the area soggy but safe.

I rapped on the door of one of the trailers that had been threatened by the rising creek in the morning. After a few futile attempts at communicating with the residents, I realized I wouldn't get past the language barrier.

The amazing thing about reporters is how fast they appear and how quickly they go away.