THE FLOODS

In this dry community here, we would not expect there to be a title of a post like that.  Many folks have asked us how we are and what it is like here.  Well first, we are not anywhere near to the same situation as those in the higher country, Boulder, Longmont, Lyons, Jamestown, etc...  We are very fortunate. 

As you now know Colorado starting having heaving rains early last week.  Over all in Boulder, they had 19 inches of rain in just a few days.  That is an entire years worth of rain, and had it been snow, it would have been 19 feet!    Many communities in the Front Range area had heavy rains.  We too had rains but not nearly to that extent.  The Saint Vrain Creek, Big Thompson River, Poudre River, etc...  All started to flood with the heavy rains.  These all flow into the South Platte River.  Thus, we watched the water from the river, as it overflowed and flooded many communities upstream.  We were prepared for it to arrive here, and arrive it did. 

Here are a few news stories and such from the time it was in Morgan County:

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local-news/colorado-flooding-sunday-morning-update-on-boulder-morgan-county-greeley-ft-collins-lyons-more

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local-news/morgan-county-braces-for-more-flooding-from-south-platte-river

http://www.9news.com/news/article/355519/339/County-by-county-breakdown-of-the-flooding

This last story is from the local newspaper.  There are some good pictures of the historic rainbow bridge.  For our out of town family and friends, you all have seen this bridge, many of you have walked across, and enjoyed the slow river that is normally about 3-5 feet deep (it was over 19 feet deep this last week).    

Every bridge in the county was closed and literally split the county in half.  Since Fort Morgan is on the south side of the river, there was not too much damage in that area.  We are on the north side of the river but a few miles away, so we too were OK.  With the bridges out, we could not go to town, but the main driving bridge has now been opened (while rainbow footbridge and the park remain closed).  We have been without natural gas for a couple of days, so no hot water for us.  Other than that, we feel very lucky in this, as we know many people are far worse off than we are, and we know that we will learn more over the next few days and weeks. 

We tried to stay out of the way and not go anywhere, so we do not have pictures of the big flood time, but we did take a few pictures on Sunday (before the bridge was open):

 We drove down another street a few miles to see how close the water was to the next bridge:

 That fence should not be under water:

And again on Monday evening:

The Bridge was open and this is just a small portion of all the stuff they pulled out from under it to allow the water to flow and open the bridge. 

 For those who have gone across the South Platte here on HWY52, know this is a lot of water.

The water has receded quite a bit as you can tell, but if you have walked across Rainbow Bridge you know the water is still very high here. 

Here is that other bridge we tried to get to on Sunday.  The bridge was still closed and you can tell the water is still very high.  On Sunday, we could not even get this close to the bridge as the road was also flooded.