Well, today proved to be a little more interesting than I’d expected. After the news of the school closure, the kids were happy to hang around the house while I headed off to work. It was raining a little as I drove to the office, but nothing serious– it’s been raining for days, so I didn’t think much of it.
I arrived at the office to find it empty. Normally a few people are there before me, so I thought maybe they were just slow coming in. I settled in and fired up my email to find a discussion amongst the team about how a bunch of roads in Boulder were closed due to flooding. James had come up to the office from Gunbarrel (just north of Boulder) and had to plow through three feet of water. Luckily he’s got a high-suspension 4×4 that could make it. He grabbed his computer from the desk and promptly went back home to work there.
I had some breakfast, wrote a few emails, and then figured it would be more fun at home than at an empty office, so I headed out. Again, the drive was fine. There wasn’t much traffic, and a light smattering of rain.
Laralee and Kyra decided to go out and do a bit of shopping, so they took off while I went to work in the basement. A little while later, Laralee called to report that they were stuck in traffic. Apparently all of the major roads in south Longmont were completely gridlocked. As it turned out, the St. Vrain Creek– which runs east-west through the middle of town– had flooded and was basically dividing the city in half. No one could get north or south across the creek (now a raging river). Looking around a bit online, I discovered that Boulder was faring just as badly due to flooding in Boulder Creek. Surrounding areas had it worse: Lyons was cut off from everywhere, and residents were instructed to boil any water before drinking it. Aurora was mostly underwater. I-70 was flooded. The entire Denver area, it seemed, was suffering in various degrees of flooded rivers.
Strangely, here at the house it was lightly sprinkling. The sun even came out for a little while. Laralee said it was pouring down where she was, just a few miles away. After an hour in traffic to travel about half a mile, she and Kyra decided to abandon the car and hike home. They parked at Home Depot on the southwest corner of town, bought some rain ponchos, and started walking. They passed hundreds of stopped cars. The police were evacuating a good chunk of south Longmont, taking people to emergency shelters.
On their way home, Laralee took a few photos. Here’s Martin Street; at the top right of the photo is a bridge that crosses the St. Vrain. A few bikers are in the center of the shot, braving the water (here it’s only about a foot deep).
About half a mile from there, they crossed a bridge over the St. Vrain and looked down on the bike path. Normallly the creek is maybe ten feet across– as you can see here, it’s probably a hundred.
They finally arrived back home, drenched, about six hours after they’d left.
Crazy stuff. But at least Kyra had the earrings she’d gone out to buy.