September Flooding

Wow!  Who knew that there was so much water stored up in the clouds.  This rain just keeps on coming and coming and coming and coming!
 

It all started on Monday after Jadeyn got home from school. It started downpouring and I jumped at the chance to go out and run in it with my boy.  This is one of my favorite memories with Jadeyn.  Running through the pouring rain and feeling the warm water collecting around our feet.  The water was bathwater warm from the heat of the cement. We raced up and down the street and gutters and then Jadeyn discovered a gold mine of the airsoft pellets floating in the gutter and we had such a blast collecting them

Well, that massive storm was just one of many to come over the next few days.  Wow.  Thunder, lightening, huge raindrops, massive puddles, and rain rain rain, then came the flooding.

I've never really been this up and close to a natural event (I guess we did get three feet of snow in one day a few years back!) but it is intimidating, impressive, scary, and beautiful all at once.
 
Jadeyn and I headed out the the Barn Park because I thought it would be cool for him to see a "swollen creek."  Uh, swollen meant that a creek, usually about 4 feet across was about 30 feet across, plus lakes all around where sidewalks and fields used to be.  I was shocked and wasn't at all prepared for what I saw.  We enjoyed every second and were grateful to have just worn water shoes so we could feel free to romp in it. Oh yeah, school was closed for a rain day!

I was able to teach Jadeyn a bit about the strength of currents.  I walked him up the sidewalk to were the creek was overtaking it and had him feel the tug on his feet.  Then we went a little further and felt the power so he could understand just how strong it is.

After such fun at the park, we got home and dried off only to get a call from Finn, Jadeyn's buddy to see if we wanted to go for a walk: absolutely!!!  Back on went the rain coats and we went exploring, this time along the greenbelt behind Jadeyn's school.

So cool.  Since a lot of the sidewalks were under a minimum of 2 inches of water, we found so many crawfish right there on the walk with us!!

Jadeyn rescued as many worms as he could that got "stuck" in the sand!  And this is fascinating: each of the posts on the walkway bridges were covered in bugs, spiders, ladybugs, slugs, snails, centipedes.  They were all seeking higher ground.

Here are a couple pictures along the trail.  The one on the left is part of the greenbelt by our house.  Its the path that goes under Airport Rd and normally has at least an 8 foot clearance and NO water running through it.  Uh, the water is within 2 feet of the top!  The next is one of the bridges with the flood waters running right over the top.

The scariest part for me was knowing that Kevin wouldn't be able to come home by any normal route within Longmont.  They closed the office at 3pm and sent everyone home, but ALL of the access roads crossing town were closed due to flooding!  There wasn't any way to cross town.  His 11 minute commute took 90 minutes! Or house is east of our his office. He had to go west to I-25, south to Hwy 7, then north on Hwy 287, then Lookout Rd (Hwy 52 was closed) then Hwy 119 (near Boulder) just to come back west to Longmont again..  The terrible part was also that my phone completely went wacko right when he was leaving.  I knew he would be trying to call perhaps to have me meet him if he had to walk, or just to tell me how far out of his way he had to go.  I raced to the Verizon store only to find it closed for the flooding.  My last resort was to go to a friends house and use their phone to try and contact him! I was so grateful when he made it home!


Here is Longmont (above)!  The photo on the left is Kevin's commute to and from work.  He goes right beside/under that bridge and you can tell why he wasn't able to make it home!  On the right is about 2 blocks from his office.  His office has been spared any flooding thankfully!

These pictures (above) are from Boulder.  Roads washed away and streets flooded.

Lyons (above) has been hit the hardest with ALL the roads to and from the town completely closed off.  I don't think that Estes Park has any access either.  It seems that they received a lot of debris with the flooding as well that has done a lot of damage. The National Guard arrived there tonight to help out.


So.....more rain tonight, more tomorrow and hopefully a break on Saturday!!