This is what the Missouri River looks like at home…
Now if you can’t see where the river is suppose to be, it starts on the left about half way down the photograph and the tree–lined river goes at a slight diagonal across the photo to near the upper right corner. Darn you record snow and rain fall up in Montana.
Though this doesn’t directly effect me, it does effect a lot other people including family. Cousins and their families have had to pack up everything and move. The river has been at flood stage since May 31st and it could stay this way until September. In Omaha, the river was at 30.51 feet this morning, is suppose to get to 32 feet by Monday and up to 34–36 feet before it’s over. What sucks even worse is that there really isn’t much anyone can do about it. It seems like every day the Army Corps of Engineers is setting a new record of how much water is discharged [I’m sure no one really likes them right now]. On Tuesday it was up to 140,000 cubic feet of water per second. The previous record before this year was 70,000 a few decades ago. And it’s not like the Engineers don’t have to be releasing the water—they do. It seems to be worse the more north you go. So right now Omaha isn’t seeing the amount of water people are just an hour north of them.
Now, I’m suppose to fly home for the 4th of July, but after seeing how close the water is to the airport runways in Omaha I’m nervous as to if I’ll even be able to fly home in a few weeks. The interstate between Council Bluffs, IA and Loveland, IA is being shut down by Friday at the latest until the water recedes. Who knows when that will be. There’s a story with a video and more photos [like the one below] on Omaha’s news site here.
And for something kind of really scary…the nuclear power plant about half hour from home is flooded.
Sorry for the quality of some of the photos—some are screen grabs from people going up in crop spray planes and posting pictures on Facebook [thanks to Evan and Kent]. More farmland…
And some houses…
These guys are trying their luck with sandbags. Hope it works!
I know that as far as mother nature and her natural disasters go, flooding is probably about the bottom of the list that people get all concerned about. I understand why…tornados, hurricanes, typhoons, etc cause so much more damage than a flood might. I mean, the chances of your house still standing after a flood is so much higher than after say a tornado or hurricane. But floods still suck, cause damage, and force people from their homes—and in this case no one really knows when they’ll be able to return. So all I can do for now is keep up with the news and look at images of places back home, and pray for these people. They say everything happens for a reason, we just don’t know this reason yet.
Here’s a couple other resources to follow the flooding as it progresses:
US Army of Engineers, Omaha District‘s Facebook
Lee Valley Auction‘s site—an auction site from home that posts pictures almost daily. You can flip through pictures to see how the water has increased and spread.
—m.