Iowa is under water

[carterlake]

Iowa is under water and apparently all the big news stations can talk about is Tim Russet (yes, a tragedy but 10,000 of thousands homeless isn't?)

[looney2ns]

Tom, thanks for reminding me once again why I stopped watching the nitwit talking heads.

[aardvark]

June 14, 2008


DM levee breached; North High threatened

Floodwaters have breached a levee east of Riverview Park and are threatening North High School, officials said this morning. The breach was discovered around 3:30 a.m.

Water already was approaching the school's parking lots when public works officials arrived at 3:50 a.m.

“There was no effective means to stop the water from getting to the high school,” said Bill Stowe, Des Moines public works director. “The water was already along the sidewalk at the high school when we arrived and we knew that we could not stop it there.”

Stowe said they chose to begin building a temporary levee along Second Avenue because “it is the only place where we have any hope of containing it.”


Closer to Second Avenue, water is to the top of the baseball dugout at Birdland ballfield and Birdland Pool is submerged with its slide and diving board visible. The pool itself cannot be seen.

Second Avenue is closed to traffic at Franklin Avenue to the south but water is not yet over the road.

At North High School, the Holcomb Avenue parking lots are under water. At 5:30 a.m. the soccer and football practice field is under water and there is water moving toward the softball field and the school


when I was a kid, we had floods but they never got across the levee.. this should be an interesting start in August.. yep.. so much for my computer..

[hydrowx]

Info on precip comparison of the 1993 flood to the current 2008 flooding available at:
http://www.sws.uiuc.edu/hilites/press/080613rainflood.asp


The attached image shows rainfall over Iowa during the last 30 days with the rivers overlay. This image created from: http://water.weather.gov/

[aardvark]

North High School is the one that I start at in August.   I bet that fancy computer is sitting on the floor of an office with fish jumping over it as we speak...RATS

[Weather Display]

sure has been amazing stuff happening in Iowa!  
...all those slow moving rain fronts with lots of embedded thunderstorms,.... day after day....

[carterlake]

sure has been amazing stuff happening in Iowa!  
...all those slow moving rain fronts with lots of embedded thunderstorms,.... day after day....

Yeah, you missed a mother of a year for tornadoes Brian

[Weather Display]

yeah, I did, seeing what Foggy got to see, I sure did alright.
Maybe in a couple more years I will be able to afford to go again (this year we are selling our house here and building a new one, back at the farm, and it will be off grid (solar and wind power) 

[TokKiwi]

Levee breached:

Water is rising in the area around Birdland swimming pool and the tennis courts.  Stowe said at 6 a.m. that he had been on the steps of North High School earlier this morning and it was dry but by 6 a.m., North High likely had about four feet of water surrounding it.

Des Moines Public Schools Director of Community relations Phil Roeder said district leaders can't begin to assess the condition of the school until they're able to access it. Items had been moved from the building's lower levels and a storage shed at the athletic field earlier this week.

A generator had been running at the school to power telecommunications to the building and 8-10 other schools, but it hadn't been refueled in hours and has probably stopped working, Roeder said.

The Cedar Rapids photos and video are shocking! There must have been a huge low lying area there - street lights about 4ft from dipping into the water! Water seems 3 or 4m deep...  12ft higher flood levels than known in recent history...

Graeme

[aardvark]

It really stinks around here with all the flooding.  I was to have started at North High in the fall.. that should be interesting...  I get normal kids there.

When I was in High school Cirqua 1965  the river flooded, but the high school and surrounding areas never were in trouble. 
Some sandbags took care of it.  Then the idea of the Saylorville dam came up , to provide recreational boating and control the river.  So  they built the dam and we have the damn trouble now.

For the life of me, I do not understand why the Army Corps didn't lower the levels on all the dams in trouble prior to this.  They knew the upper drainage patterns and basins were   going to be flooded, but made no attempt to drain the dam down below the conservation levels  to contain what was coming in and then to regulate it  as they filled up.

I guess the old saying " when you are up to your ass in alligators, it is hard to remember that the initial directive was to drain the swamp."

I am fine..  new weather sensors are doing what they supposed to   .. trying to keep from being bored.  we are not in the flood areas but travel is a bit interesting to get around town. 

The folks in eastern Iowa  are really having a very rough time of it . NPR  said this morning that they were moving the library books and things at the University of Iowa Library.  The flooding there is continuing.

More rain this afternoon and evening.. just a little wind and all that humidity and we have thunderstorms on top of this.

Next time come to Iowa in May and June.. 

[Budmn8]

  Well guess what its doing In eastern Iowa AGAIN   and the rain chances for today was slight to none.  They just said on TV that a town just south of Cedar Rapids had 3 Inches of Hail on the ground.  Unknown diameter but they expect pea to golfball size.  Looks like that will go south of us

Brad

[Harry]

Another levee failure.  This one in Southeast Iowa.  How big is Oakville?  Is it heavily populated around there?

Flash Flood Warning
Louisa (Iowa)
FLASH FLOOD WARNING
IAC115-150500-
/O.NEW.KDVN.FF.W.0045.080614T2259Z-080615T0500Z/
/00000.U.DM.000000T0000Z.000000T0000Z.000000T0000Z.OO/
BULLETIN - EAS ACTIVATION REQUESTED
FLASH FLOOD WARNING
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE QUAD CITIES IA IL
559 PM CDT SAT JUN 14 2008
THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN THE QUAD CITIES HAS ISSUED A
* FLASH FLOOD WARNING FOR A LEVEE FAILURE IN...
SOUTHEASTERN LOUISA COUNTY IN SOUTHEAST IOWA...
* UNTIL MIDNIGHT CDT SUNDAY
* AT 555 PM CDT...EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT REPORTED THAT THE OAKVILLE
LEVEE HAS FAILED...ON THE IOWA RIVER...CAUSING FLASH FLOODING OF
IMMEDIATELY SURROUNDING AREAS.
* AFFECTED LOCATIONS INCLUDE OAKVILLE
MOST FLOOD DEATHS OCCUR IN AUTOMOBILES. NEVER DRIVE YOUR VEHICLE INTO
AREAS WHERE THE WATER COVERS THE ROADWAY. FLOOD WATERS ARE USUALLY
DEEPER THAN THEY APPEAR. JUST ONE FOOT OF FLOWING WATER IS POWERFUL
ENOUGH TO SWEEP VEHICLES OFF THE ROAD. WHEN ENCOUNTERING FLOODED
ROADS MAKE THE SMART CHOICE...TURN AROUND...DONT DROWN.
LAT...LON 4108 9107 4110 9107 4111 9105 4115 9105
4117 9102 4116 9100 4111 9096 4107 9096
$$
JAZ/BRP

[niko]

KCRG has good coverage of the floods, acc to them Oakville is pop 400.

[Budmn8]

KCRG has good coverage of the floods, acc to them Oakville is pop 400.

 KCRG is the best news station In eastern Iowa   as far as I am concerned

Brad

[Stronghurst]

Oakville is a small town near the Iowa river about 6 miles before it joins the Mississippi river.  Small town but they have a very large grain elevator and it is heavy in farmland.  Some of the richest farmland is on the river bottoms.

Spent many a night there.

Mark