Once again, fifteen years after the last flood, we are having severe flooding in the Midwest. We had a ton of rain, on top of a ton of snow, and all the rivers are expected to crest at higher levels than 1993. It's only going to get worse, too, because we have more heavy rain on the schedule for later this week. I'm fine, my parents are fine, my brothers and sisters-in-law are fine, and the worst any of us are going to have are some pretty insane pictures of high water. However, there are many people who aren't fine and who are losing their homes. New Hartford, which was leveled by an F5 tornado on Memorial Day weekend, has now been evacuated because what was left is all underwater. My brother (the paramedic one) just came in from shift and they closed US218 south behind him because the Cedar River is rising (he works in Waverly and the river runs through the middle of town). I'm in Iowa City and the Coralville Resirvoir is close to running over the spillway at the top (the only other time that happened was in 1993). Pretty much any low-lying area near the river is flooding. This link is to a picture of Lower City Park on the Iowa River; in undergrad I lived in the building (Mayflower Hall) in the lower left hand corner, the little concrete island is a skateboard park which is normally across a two-lane divided road from the 'Flower, the tree-less stripe down the middle is where the Iowa River normally lives, and everything else until you get to the funny round building (Riverside Shakespeare Theatre) at the top of the picture is floodwater. More pictures are available at either the Iowa City Press-Citizen or the Cedar Rapids Gazette.
I might meet the bus downtown so I can see the river looks like today. I'm thinking about bringing my camera and getting some pictures tomorrow morning.
Current book-in-progress: definitely working on finished ideas (because there are only 200 pages left) and The Shakespeare Wars (only 100 pages left)
Current knitted item: Wool smells funny when wet, boo
Current movie obsession: Movies? What movies? I've been glued to the weather report for a week
Current iTunes loop: John Mayer "Any Given Tuesday"
No comments:
Post a Comment