OT - Floating awayyyyyyy

From my blog this morning...

So it's been really interesting here the last couple of days with all the flooding going on. Several towns in western Washington, including my own, have had some pretty serious stuff happening. This morning I got a chance to go out with my camera and take some pics and shoot a little bit of really bad video to show everyone. Basically, we are pretty much trapped at our house for a couple of days, except when the neighbors can cart us into town in their big pickup truck - and even that's pretty difficult.

The one- mile stretch of our street has several spots that are knee deep, and a bunch of houses are completely flooded. It's pretty scary. Here are some pics of the street just outside our house - thank goodness we live up on a little hill, or we might be in trouble (like some of our neighbors). Basically, the levy up on the river on the hill above our house broke, so the creek is sweeled up and rushing down into places it normally would not, causing flooding. Parts of the street are broken off, and some places have an entirely new creek. This is nothing really compared to the depth of the water further down the street towards town, but the video I captured of that is too big to upload. We are on a dead end street, so this is the only way out. The guy in the first pic is standing on a bit of an island - it's deeper about 20 feet in front of him where the bridge used to be.

In this pic, you can see the creek on the lower right side where it is rushing past our neighbor's house - the creek split and has basically made that house an island - and they had to evacuate. Earlier this morning there were people out sandbagging the area to try and divert the creek away from the house. The center of the pic is where the other side of the creek is meeting with the near side, in front of this house. That is a street, but you can't really tell with all the water. The water is all through their yard and up to the house, and is actually rushing by (as opposed to just a standing water flood, which is how it is down the street a ways. A closer picture of the street where a bucnh of asphalt has been broken off and is floating away. Who knows what this road will be like after the water goes down.

So for the next few days, we are stuck at home and will be hoping for the rain to stop soon!