floods

[low_delta]

There's a USGS monitoring station on the Milwaukee River near here. It says the river is doing nearly 5000 cfs. That's 5000 cubic feet per second.

Okay, so if the river is fifty feet wide and ten feet deep (at the moment), that means it's moving at ten feet per second, or six miles per hour. Oh, and that's 37,000 gallons per second.

The station says flood stage is 11 feet. Current stage is 11.9 feet. Predicted high is 13.2 feet. A week ago, it was at 6.5 feet. It jumped to 13.7 feet by tuesday morning, after we had the bad storms over the weekend.

In other news...

In Oshkosh, three-quarters of all streets were underwater, city spokesman John Urben said. By 8 pm, 4.6 inches of water had fallen in the city, and the 9th Avenue Bridge over Sawyer Creek was overtopped with water. Oshkosh police were directing city buses to pick up stranded motorists, Urben said.

In Fond du Lac, heavy rain left many of the city’s roads 2 feet under water.

Ducks had started rescuing residents late Thursday afternoon after the Baraboo Police and Fire departments requested that the half-boat, half-truck vehicles help them move trapped residents to higher ground in downtown Baraboo.

One of the southbound lanes of I-39 near Portage, just north of the I-90/94 cutoff, was closed when water flowed over the pavement.

Westbound I-94 lanes in Jefferson County were closed in mid-afternoon when the Crawfish River pushed close to the road. The same lanes were closed earlier in the week, when the Rock River rose to within inches of the freeway. Heather and Greg picked the right day to come home (yesterday), since the highway was closed today and the day before yesterday.

High winds blew over two semitrailer trucks on I-43 near Highway 83 in the Village of Mukwonago shortly before 3 p.m. One of the trailers landed on a vehicle that was traveling alongside, but the vehicle’s driver and the drivers of both trucks were not injured.

Iowa County Emergency Management Director Ken Palzkill said his county saw an "unprecedented" amount of rain Thursday afternoon. He said the village of Cobb got 3 inches of rain in an hour.

Boy Scouts praised as heroes after twister kills 4: BLENCOE, Iowa (AP) -- When the howling winds finally died down, the Boy Scouts - true to their motto, "Be Prepared" - sprang into action. Putting their first-aid training to use, they applied tourniquets and gauze to the injured. Some began digging victims from the rubble of a collapsed chimney. And others broke into an equipment shed, seized chainsaws and other tools, and started clearing fallen trees from a road. Killed were Aaron Eilerts, 14, of Eagle Grove, Iowa, and Josh Fennen, 13, Sam Thomsen, 13, and Ben Petrzilka, 14, all of Omaha, Neb. Roitstein said all four had taken shelter in a building that was leveled, and all of them were found near its collapsed stone chimney. At least a dozen people remained hospitalized Thursday with everything from bruises to spine and head injuries.

Comments

[roadskoller.livejournal.com]

When I heard about the trucks, I was just thankful that ours is parked in the middle of a bunch of 'em. It's empty and that's not good.

Flood insurance

[shoo.livejournal.com]

SHIT! It looks crazy on CNN. My heart goes out to all the people there. They looked so shocked and sad.

[ranunculus.livejournal.com]

You are drowning and we are burning up - literally. Temps near 100 and -lots- of fires in Northern California.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

I was talking to a guy from North Carolina who said the same thing. 100 degrees last weekend, and things are smoky from fires 150 miles away.

[emschin.livejournal.com]

I thought of Stan and your truck right away when the story came across the news. I did some looking trying to find your phone no. I might have Stan's but if he was in storms I didn't want his phone to ring while he drov.

[ranunculus.livejournal.com]

We have several major fires burning, at present the top 5 fires have burned 50 thousand acres of land in the last 5 days. All but one is listed as less than 35 % contained, and those are just the fires that are still burning. Those totals don't count lots and lots of smaller fires, or fires contained more than 5 days ago.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

I saw some footage a little while ago, of one that looked pretty nasty.

[ranunculus.livejournal.com]

The skies last night in Ukiah were really beautiful with all that smoke in the air, but breathing the stuff has been a challenge for my allergies. Gotta admit that we only hit one place for a minute or two on the drive down that really had both M and I coughing.

Ah well, some years are just dry.

[vocalista001.livejournal.com]

While counting my blessings tonight, I happened to remember that Cyn had a gnat in her teeth after rounding the NW coast of the Island, and Tess was grossed out by the loss of gnat life in her hair.

Just thought I'd share.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

:-)