Weather this year blows

Here in Waterloo we're experiencing record flooding. They're calling it a 500 year flood. All of the water is unreal. Everyone jokes about building an arch or coming to work by boat. The jokes are really only an attempt to make light of all of the suffering going on around us because if you don't joke about it, you could just cry. So many have lost their homes in the floods. One of my employees has been evacuated out of her apartment since Tuesday. Another has flood waters creeping up her back yard and up her street. Her driveway is the end of dry land. If the water goes much higher and it will be seeping in.

It would take much higher water to endanger our home. However, the water is so saturated I could cry and my basement would flood. Well flood even more I should say. We don't have a massive amount of water in our basement. But the ground is so wet somehow it is getting underneath our basement floor and caused our concrete to crack and buckle. We can stick our finger in the hole and feel clay. I stick my head down the basement stairwell and can hear water trickling. Much like the ambient sounds of a water fountain. Though this sound not quite so peaceful. We've had water in our basement before but not like this. But this is NOTHING compared to what's going on in the community around us.

This flooding was insult to injury for our community. The F5 Parkersburg tornado not even 2 weeks ago deeply scarred our community as well. It is a neighboring town. The receptionist of my stores optometrist's office lives on a farm 5 miles from Parkersburg. She didn't have any damage but her friends, family, and neighbors did. It was a Sunday afternoon, Graduation weekend. Many people at graduation open houses. Her daughter graduated that day. Now the school and most of the town are gone.

It's a day I'll never forget. We were in Washington for my little brother's graduation and watching the coverage on the news knowing how close it was and not knowing if there was other damage even closer to home. See video at end of post.

And my heart breaks for the victims and their families of the tornado in Blencoe, a town in western Iowa. It is so tragic. A tornado struck a boyscout camp. When I heard it on the knews all I could think of was how terrified I would be as a parent to be miles away and know what had happened, powerless to do anything about it.

All of this following record snowfalls this past winter. And a spring that seemed like it would never come because we had snow on the ground as late as Easter. That and it just recently started be spring/summer like as far as temperature goes.

I think we've had way more than our fair share of foul weather for the year, if not the decade!

Here is a slideshow I found online. I only have 1 picture taken by me en route to work, but it's only of a flooded lowlying park I drive past everyday. I have been a good girl and heeded the advice of public officials and stayed out of the hard hit areas to reduce traffic for emergency vehicles. I'd like to see the flooding in real life but I plan on staying away. I would have liked to go sandbag but instead I worked everyday including my day off so that my employees who were affected wouldn't have to worry about working. The girl who was evacuated sandbagged for most of 3 days!