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K–12 teaching and learning · from the UNC School of Education

Measuring Hurricane Floyd's floodwaters

About this recording

Oral Histories of the American South, Documenting the American South, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Date created
December 7, 1999
Duration
1:48
File
MP3
License
This recording copyright ©2004. All Rights Reserved
Source
Original audio housed by Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

See this recording in context

  • Measuring the waters: This lesson plan uses an excerpt from an oral history about measuring flood waters during Hurricane Floyd to teach students about the many ways measurements can be taken. Students are given an opportunity to practice measuring with a variety of tools and evaluate their effectiveness. (Page 1.3)
  • Measuring the waters: This lesson plan uses an excerpt from an oral history about measuring flood waters during Hurricane Floyd to teach students about the many ways measurements can be taken. Students are given an opportunity to practice measuring with a variety of tools and evaluate their effectiveness. (Page 2.2)

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In this oral history excerpt, Earl Cavenaugh from Duplin County, North Carolina, describes his tried-and-true method of measuring how fast the creek near his home rises — and how it failed him during Hurricane Floyd.

Transcript

Early Cavenaugh
General rain — it’s been known through our generation. If it’s rain, a general rain, it’s going to get out of the banks. It will rise by the time it quits raining, five days. Sometimes it depends on whether it rains more there or here, whether or not it would go four maybe or five. But we were looking for it to rise five, but it was up here the second day after it quit raining. More than it, uh, had been being as high as the flood.
Charles Thompson
After that second day, did y’all start knowing that it was different right away?
Early Cavenaugh
Always when it rains, I kind of wanted to know how high it is coming. So I got me an aluminum yardstick and I go stick it down in the ground to ten. Then I go back and read it and see how many inches it goes an hour. I’ve been doing that now since 1962, when it come into my house. So I know kind of how to prepare — see how fast it’s coming. So I took that one this time and went down to check it. Uh, I lost the thing. It was done gone. Usually two inches an hour at the very peak is all it would rise. This time it was coming a foot an hour or something.
Charles Thompson
A foot an hour.