"Biblical" flooding

This is what scares me the most . . . . erosion, makes that road look like a cracker

Our basement is dry and we are in no danger of flooding at this point. (We live on a hill).
My parents had a small amount of water damage in their basement. We've experienced emotions of guilt at not experiencing more personal loss . . . the damage this flood has caused throughout our state will be felt for a long time. It spread hundreds of miles and affects millions of people. We will have opportunities to serve.

The Coloradoan, our local paper, posted an aerial view of many areas in our county. If you click on THIS LINK, you will arrive at the Coloradoan homepage. About one third of the way down, there are some videos . . . one of them is titled "Aerial tour of Fort Collins, Loveland flooding."

Nathan's office is the green roof at 1:24 in the video. . . . the parking lot that's almost completely submerged. There was water on the east and the north. Around 50 people bagged 7 tons of dirt yesterday morning to prevent penetration. So far, it looks like the water has stayed out, and it has receded today to leave the parking lot dry.

We were not the hardest hit, by any means, but seeing this video brought home the damage a little more.

School was cancelled on FR. The kids were elated to stay home. I don't think they understood the magnitude, so we watched the news together last night--then they knew a little more.

The photos tell the story really well . . . destruction everywhere. I was in Lafayette, CO this morning. One of the Boulder residents told me that of 50 bridges in Boulder County, 30 were gone. Washed away. I crossed both the St. Vrain and Big Thompson rivers on I-25 and was surprised to see with my own eyes how high the water is. Lots of people out taking pictures and a big slow down in traffic as everyone slowed down to see.

If you want to see more . . . there are thousands. I grabbed the one above from the link below. You might laugh, you will be shocked, you might cry. Take time for the captions.
9 News Photo Gallery

A couple more facts . . . the average rainfall in our area is 12-15 inches. Many communities got nearly that much in 24-48 hours. The other interesting tidbit is that one inch of rain is comparable to 10 inches of snow . . . for example Red Feather Lakes, who had 14 inches in these storms, had the equivalent moisture of 140 inches of snow--well over 10 feet.

It's going to be an interesting school year. . . day before Labor Day weekend was cancelled due to excessive heat in UN-airconditioned buildings, this Friday for excessive rain . . . guess what's coming next???
SNOW!

More to come as Colorado re-builds.