6-05-08I was working on a post tonight and some really heavy thunderstorms are moving into the area ... they appear to have knocked out my weather sites for radar ... things are getting rather noisy and scary out there so off I go ....
Never have had to do this before, but time to shut off the equipment. Regular posting tomorrow I hope!
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6-06-08
Here we go again tonight! That capture of the most current regional radar above is roughly what things look like about now (11:30 p.m. 6 June) ... we've already had some scary cells move through the area, and the sirens were even blown several times due to a tornado warning, which prompted me to shut everything down and head out for some observation. Fortunately local TV was covering it closely minute by minute so I found out that though relatively close (w/in a 15 min drive), it was moving north very quickly and was just skirting the outer northern edges of the city, along I-80 and points north. That's not to say we're not getting some pretty dramatic weather (we are) ... lots of rain, thunder and lightning ... Fernymoss just summoned me down to the porch to observe the current street flooding ... which has engulfed the intersection (as usual in such storms), come up over the curb and is clear up to the base of the front of the boulder bed and is filling the lower part of the driveway. Fun times in June in Iowa! And also, as usual, we have a stalled car in the intersection due to the flooding ... it happens every year several times that some foolish soul will try to just charge through the 2-3 ft of water in the street ... why these people think they can make it is something that continues to mystify us. When the water is deeper than the base of your car doors, how does one think s/he will escape unscathed?
Things seem to be calming down into a steady rain at this point, but from the looks of that system in the radar (which extends all the way down to southern TX!), it looks to be with us most of the night, since it's generally moving North. Hopefully I'll be able to complete the post I was working on earlier, but if it doesn't show up tonight, you'll know some more scary stuff came through.
6/06/08 12:35 a.m. Fernymoss discovered, much to his horror, that we now have flooding in the basement ... to the tune of about 5 inches at this point! We have never had flooding or even much water come into the basement in the nearly 10 years we've lived here ... this is a serious storm system for us, and it doesn't look like it's going to let up any time soon tonight! And it sounds like various other parts of the city are in a similar situation given this excerpt from the local storm report:
Here we go again tonight! That capture of the most current regional radar above is roughly what things look like about now (11:30 p.m. 6 June) ... we've already had some scary cells move through the area, and the sirens were even blown several times due to a tornado warning, which prompted me to shut everything down and head out for some observation. Fortunately local TV was covering it closely minute by minute so I found out that though relatively close (w/in a 15 min drive), it was moving north very quickly and was just skirting the outer northern edges of the city, along I-80 and points north. That's not to say we're not getting some pretty dramatic weather (we are) ... lots of rain, thunder and lightning ... Fernymoss just summoned me down to the porch to observe the current street flooding ... which has engulfed the intersection (as usual in such storms), come up over the curb and is clear up to the base of the front of the boulder bed and is filling the lower part of the driveway. Fun times in June in Iowa! And also, as usual, we have a stalled car in the intersection due to the flooding ... it happens every year several times that some foolish soul will try to just charge through the 2-3 ft of water in the street ... why these people think they can make it is something that continues to mystify us. When the water is deeper than the base of your car doors, how does one think s/he will escape unscathed?
Things seem to be calming down into a steady rain at this point, but from the looks of that system in the radar (which extends all the way down to southern TX!), it looks to be with us most of the night, since it's generally moving North. Hopefully I'll be able to complete the post I was working on earlier, but if it doesn't show up tonight, you'll know some more scary stuff came through.
6/06/08 12:35 a.m. Fernymoss discovered, much to his horror, that we now have flooding in the basement ... to the tune of about 5 inches at this point! We have never had flooding or even much water come into the basement in the nearly 10 years we've lived here ... this is a serious storm system for us, and it doesn't look like it's going to let up any time soon tonight! And it sounds like various other parts of the city are in a similar situation given this excerpt from the local storm report:
06/05/2008 1145 PMLooks like it's going to be a long, worrisome night! We may be out looking for a sump pump very soon, I'm afraid ....
Des Moines, Polk County.
Flash flood, reported by trained spotter.
Man hole covers blown off. Geysers of water leading to
flooding on grand Avenue between 31st and 43rd avenues.
