Flooding

Soooooo, this is the road I usually take home in the evenings. Needless to say, I did not take my usual route this evening! I did make it to the top of the hill by the underpass shown here, but when I saw the water (and Police), I turned onto a side street. At about 3:15 this afternoon it started to rain . . . and rain . . . and pour. Then at 3:30 we got hit with a severe thunderstorm which brought golf ball sized hail, more rain, thunder, and lightning. It was literally raining buckets. I was in my office at the Lincoln Home Conference Center, and I couldn't even see across the street. My friend Melissa was in one of the other houses in the Lincoln neighborhood, and she called to ask me a question. As we were talking, she said, "Oh wait, I have to go. The Beedle House is flooding!" Turns out a window wasn't sealed properly, so they got about an eighth of an inch of water on the floor. One of the other homes started leaking (thankfully not the Lincoln Home), and then a tree got hit by lightning and fell across the road right by the Lincoln Home. Luckily they stopped tours at this point. It was absolutely crazy. Then on my way home, I saw cars that literally had water up to their windows! A bunch of streets were closed, and my drive that usually takes 10 minutes took closer to an hour.

When I finally made it home, I was looking at some of the pictures people had posted online of the flooding. I saw this picture with the caption "8th and Cook," and realized that is ONE BLOCK south of the Lincoln neighborhood! I recognize those houses. There was a lot of water in the neighborhood when we all left work this evening, so hopefully it hasn't risen THAT much just since 5:00, but I guess we'll find out tomorrow. Luckily the Lincoln Home sits higher than the rest of the neighborhood. They were saying that we got nearly five inches of rain in under two hours. That's a lot of rain!

Behind our condo there is a really pretty wooded area with a stream running through it. Greg got home from work at about 4:00 and noticed that the stream had risen quite a bit. So he went out to take a look at it and literally saw the stream start to wash over the road! There were some construction barriers on the sidewalk, but as you can see from this picture, the barriers washed away. People who live in th neighborhood up above ours couldn't get home until the water went down a bit. The nice field of grass across the street from us turned into a lake--but the water didn't get close to our condo at all. What a crazy day!