Flood

I still can hardly believe it, but we are in the middle of a flood. They're calling it a 25-year flood, not a 100-year flood, but we've already gotten about twice as much rain in the last few days as Boulder has EVER gotten in the month of September. Close to 7 inches in the last 24 hours, not counting the days before that. (Edited to add: I just read that the past day has been Boulder's rainiest DAY ever, not just rainiest September day ever. September 2013 is also Boulder's rainiest MONTH ever, not just rainiest September ever. As of 9:15 this morning we'd had over 7 inches in 15 hours, so by now it's more. Crazy.)

Our bathroom ceiling was looking really bad last night.

So around 11 pm, after the warning sirens went off (they were warning about Boulder Creek flooding, which is nowhere near us, but it was still scary -- I've never heard the sirens go off before except when they test them), Rocket Boy heaved a sigh, put on a lot of rain gear, and went up on our roof to place a tarp over the area where we thought the water was getting in.

 

This morning, though, the rain was still getting in. We found this out bright and early, because we got a robo-call at 5:30 am telling us that Boulder Valley schools were closed for the day. It didn't wake up the twins, but they got up at 6:30, so I did too, and we've been hanging out watching the news -- or PBS kids shows (we only have one TV) all day.

An hour or two ago we went out for a walk, during a period where it was only drizzling. We thought we'd go down to the park to see what our local creek was doing. Here's the bridge that we normally walk across to get to school.

And here's the view from the bridge:

It doesn't usually look like that.

It was starting to flood the park in a few areas, and we could see that the flooding had been worse last night.

So after a bit we decided to go back home, especially since the rain was picking up again and we didn't want to become statistics.

In most of our neighborhood things don't look too bad, just wet.

But damage is occurring. Here's what's happening to our beautiful front porch, whose roof is less than five years old:

So we can't hang out on the porch and watch the rain, because the porch is soaked. Still, I went out there for a while after we got home, because the warning sirens were going off again. I couldn't understand what they were saying, so went back inside to let the TV news tell me what the warning message had been: a wall of water was coming down Boulder Creek, and GET TO HIGHER GROUND NOW. Not our problem, but I am so worried about what's happening in other parts of the city -- and the county -- and other parts of the state.

This is what our bathroom ceiling looks like now. Mildew is occurring -- see the black spots?

Stay safe, everyone else in Colorado. Most people have it SO much worse than we do.