It rained nearly every day last week, but only a few hours each day until Thursday night. It started raining at 8:00 PM that night, and it didn't stop until 1:00 PM on Friday. When we woke up at 6 AM on Friday (the electricity was out, by the way) we went outside on Luke's & Grant's balcony and saw that the river across the street from us had risen over its banks and over the road in front of our house. At that point the water was up to the gate to our driveway in front of our house (it had been a little bit higher earlier in the morning). It was one of the most incredible things we have ever seen. Luckily, by mid morning the water level was low enough so that the street in front of our house was clear. School was cancelled on Friday and I didn't go in to work. I heard nightmare reports of 3 to 5 hour commutes to get from our end of the town into city.Because the power was out, we spent most of the day indoors, talking with other people (from work, friends, etc) about the flooding around different parts of the city. The power at our house went back on at about 3:00 pm. Luke had some friends over in the afternoon, and in the evening Heidi and I went to the mall to eat dinner, and then go to a movie with some friends. It was strange to see the mall so empty.
Saturday we had a few things going on - Luke attended a birthday party, we did some grocery shopping, and Grant had a rehearsal for the school musical. Today, Sunday, we went to church - our numbers were lower than normal because some people's routes were blocked because of continued flooding. I continued to get updates from people at work about their situation. The homes of many people at work are flooded (I have received reports of between 5 cm and 1.5 meters in the homes of Ford employees here). Apparently 200,000 people have been evacuated from their homes, and thousands more have water damage. It'll be interesting to see how many people make it in to work tomorrow and to see how bad the roads are.
Friday morning when the water in front of our house had gone down, we went on a walk around the neighborhood to see what things looked like. The photo below is of the street right next to ours. Many of the homes at the end of the street had half a foot or more of water in them.
