Colorado Flooding

[Pop_Rivit]

I sincerely hope that everyone from the Colorado area is safe, high and as dry as can be. There are some incredible stories coming out of the area being flooded.

We heard from my wife's brother; he lives in Firestone and works in Lyons. Apparently he was called in Wednesday night/Thursday morning, and while driving into Lyons his car was washed into a river. Being the hearty soul that he is, he managed to get out of the car, watched it float downriver, and hiked the rest of the way into work. When he arrived at work he emailed my wife, and since she also drives a Subaru, warned her that he discovered that they indeed do not float and can't go everywhere.

 

[Rolla07]

LOL

I thought subies had amphibious mode??!!

 

[Mystic]

There is severe flooding in Boulder. They showed video of the basements with water at the CU campus. People can't get to work in Boulder.

All of the westbound roads for Manitou Springs are closed.

There has been 8-9 inches of rain in about four hours at the Fort Carson Army Base. Over 400,000 people in Colorado Springs are under flash flood warnings.

The Fountain River, usually a mild little creek, has been running band to bank. I remember many years ago when I was young and the Fountain River flooded. It sounded like a freight train.

 

[daves87rs]

Hoping everyone is okay....

 

[Bladecutter]

Luckily the flooding seems to be heaviest to areas North of Boulder, so down here in Arvada, Westminster, and Broomfield, it's not so bad. Just lots of rain.

BC.

 

[HellaBroke]

Originally Posted By: Rolla07
LOL

I thought subies had amphibious mode??!!

Im sorry natrual disasters shouldent be joked with..
but HAHAHA halarious..

 

[bvance554]

OMG! Water in the basement?! People can't get to work?! I'm sorry but my sympathy for natural 'disasters' has all but worn thin. Its raining in CO. They've been compaining about drought for years, so there you go.

 

[SuzukiGoat]

We flood around here fairly often... and parts of LSU campus used to frequently get 30+ inches deep.

Hopefully everyone uses their heads. If they do, they'll be fine.

 

[supton]

I can't wait for the leaves to fall of the trees, so I can receive the local news on the TV again. Thanks for the heads up.

I have to admit, I like my walk out basement. Never had problems with flooding. Being 20' above the lake helps too, it'd take a biblical flood for me to have water issues.

 

[Bladecutter]

Originally Posted By: bvance554
OMG! Water in the basement?! People can't get to work?! I'm sorry but my sympathy for natural 'disasters' has all but worn thin. Its raining in CO. They've been complaining about drought for years, so there you go.


Hey, you inconsiderate jerk, several people lots their lives in this "rain event" as you call it. Quite a few major roads up in the mountain canyons have either been closed, or damaged due to water or landslides. People's cars have been swept off the road, and down stream, with people inside of them.

Also, if you haven't paid any attention in the past several years, we've had quite a few forest fires that have destroyed large chunk of area, and this leads to landslides when rain events like this happen, shortly after the forest is destroyed.

Plus, most of Colorado has clay substrate, which doesn't absorb water like the soil does in the rest of the country, so we have an even bigger problem when it rains for 4 days straight, like it has.

For you, it's not a disaster.
For the family of the people who have died, to them it is.

You are an inconsiderate jerk, and that's for the record.

BC.

 

[bvance554]

Originally Posted By: Bladecutter
Originally Posted By: bvance554
OMG! Water in the basement?! People can't get to work?! I'm sorry but my sympathy for natural 'disasters' has all but worn thin. Its raining in CO. They've been complaining about drought for years, so there you go.


Hey, you inconsiderate jerk, several people lots their lives in this "rain event" as you call it. Quite a few major roads up in the mountain canyons have either been closed, or damaged due to water or landslides. People's cars have been swept off the road, and down stream, with people inside of them.

Also, if you haven't paid any attention in the past several years, we've had quite a few forest fires that have destroyed large chunk of area, and this leads to landslides when rain events like this happen, shortly after the forest is destroyed.

Plus, most of Colorado has clay substrate, which doesn't absorb water like the soil does in the rest of the country, so we have an even bigger problem when it rains for 4 days straight, like it has.

For you, it's not a disaster.
For the family of the people who have died, to them it is.

You are an inconsiderate jerk, and that's for the record.

BC.


You know what? I was in a mood last night when i said that, and admit that i made the insensitive comment without having any idea what was going on in CO. Today i saw the footage and it is much worse than water in the basement and not being able to get to work. My frame of mind when i read the commet that i quoted was that basements flood all the time, and i've been cutoff by flood waters myself. The post that i responded to didn't quite capture reality. So, i offer my sincere appology.

 

[GreeCguy]

My wife's parents live in Canon City and her aunt lives in Fort Collins - hopefully they're okay - will call today, (we've both been so busy we haven't been watching the news - heard of flooding but didn't realize it was this bad until now).

 

[Rhymingmechanic]

Flooding in places that get less than 20 inches of rain a year is a whole different animal. A long, soaking rain that just puts the rivers up in the East could drop a large percentage of the yearly precipitation for most of Colorado. Add drastic elevation changes and there's trouble.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Thompson_River

 

[Mystic]

What has made the flooding much worse are the large burn scar areas where forest fires destroyed much of the vegetation. So there are not trees and other plants to soak up the water. And this area of the country is just not used to such heavy rainfall and the soils are not really designed for it either.

At Fort Carson they had something like 12-13 inches of rainfall in a matter of hours. For an entire year in that area there is normally about 18 inches of rainfall.

Today there are still some 200 people missing and four are known to be dead. The missing people hopefully are people in remote mountain communities that will be reached soon. Hopefully the 200 missing are not people who have died.

I live in Colorado and I did not realize at first how bad it was because we did not get as much rainfall as some places like Boulder and the mainstream media ignores Colorado to a large extent and covers only the West Coast and East Coast. Colorado is considered flyover country. FOX News had some coverage but I checked a few other news stations and they seemed more interested in who was dating who in Hollywood. The news media sure has declined in quality. They had little coverage of the massive forest fires either.

The rain has died down quite a bit. But there is supposed to be rain on Sunday. It rained four days straight where I live.

 

[Mystic]

I did not realize how bad the flooding was at first and I live in Colorado. I think the news media in this country is so incompetent that it is actually potentially life threatening.

The first day we had rain but not all that much. I don't normally watch the local news all that much unless there are important local events and the national news media seemed at first to have limited information on the Colorado flooding. I did hear about some serious flooding in Manitou Springs near Colorado Springs but that has been happening with any major rainstorm because of the nearby forest fire burn scar.

I didn't really hear much about the severe flooding until the second day. In my area of Colorado we had four days of rain but not that bad. I turned the local news on and found out a lot. Even FOX News had relatively limited coverage at least at first and the news coverage of the Colorado flooding by other national news outlets was incompetent at best.

It seems like it should be national news when flooding affects an area the size of the State of Connecticut and hundreds of thousands of people. But the national news is more interested in covering who is dating who in Hollywood.

Several areas have been severely affected by the flooding, such as Boulder Colorado. They are calling it a 100 year flood there. I guess I should explain that people have noticed over a long period of time that rivers have a tendency to experience major flooding about every 100 years. So people started to call it a 100 year flood. The educational system in this country is so bad young people here probably have never heard of a 100 year flood.

The flooding has not affected my area that much except for the rivers. The Fountain River (we call it the Fountain Creek locally) has been running high. It is normally a mild mannered little stream that seems incapable of being dangerous. I have lived long enough to see the severe flooding of the Fountain River in 1965. It sounded like a freight train and I saw a house floating downstream.

 

[Drew99GT]

I'm up to 7.75 inches of rain in the last week which is the most I've ever seen in Colorado, and that is nothing like some of the rainfall totals in other parts of the state!

I live on a hill, and my neighbor is accusing me of the runoff from my house/yard, flooding his basement. ROLLEYES

I've done a ton (almost pathological!) of work to get my downspouts to flow out away from my house so they flow away from his house as well. I showed him, and he wants me to dig up the yard between the 2 houses and put some kind of drain/diverting system in place.

W T F! What about the water coming from above my house.

Is that my fault as well?

This guy has done nothing to mitigate water from HIS house and HIS yard, and it's all my fault.

Ughhh

 

[Mystic]

They are finally reaching some of the towns, isolated farms and ranches, etc., that were cut off by the flooding. I have seen reports of something like 19,000 homes destroyed, in addition to numerous businesses, etc., 6 people confirmed dead in Colorado, and 1,200 missing in Colorado.

In my area of Colorado we have a lot of rain but no really serious flooding except close to rivers. I saw one of those rivers and it was running bank to bank. It is supposed to dry up the next several days.

 

[glock19]

Originally Posted By: Drew99GT
I'm up to 7.75 inches of rain in the last week which is the most I've ever seen in Colorado, and that is nothing like some of the rainfall totals in other parts of the state!

I live on a hill, and my neighbor is accusing me of the runoff from my house/yard, flooding his basement. ROLLEYES

I've done a ton (almost pathological!) of work to get my downspouts to flow out away from my house so they flow away from his house as well. I showed him, and he wants me to dig up the yard between the 2 houses and put some kind of drain/diverting system in place.

W T F! What about the water coming from above my house.

Is that my fault as well?

This guy has done nothing to mitigate water from HIS house and HIS yard, and it's all my fault.

Ughhh


Why would he want to take responsibility for protecting his own property when he can just get you to do it for him? (end sarcasm)

Unless he lived there and you built a hill afterwards I have no idea why he's complaining. He knew the hill was there when he bought the house and I hope he knew water runs downhill. People just don't want to take responsibility for themselves and it's sad.

 

[Drew99GT]

This is the same guy who put rain barrels on the downspouts at the upper end of his house (which is illegal), with no provision for when they fill up and overflow. He's since fixed that "issue", and I showed him that he needs downspout extensions that get the water out away from the slope away from his house. Plus, the land on the upslope side of his house between my house isn't graded correctly for water to run off away from the house!

When you get 2 inches of rain in 30 minutes, all bets are off, especially if you haven't prepared for it.