It's wet!!

It has been another wet day. The rain isn't helping the flooding. Cedar Rapids is experiencing the biggest flood in its history. A large portion of the down town area is under a significant amount of water. Water is inundating what they call the 500 year flood plain. Several railroad bridges have gone down and I-80 is being closed tomorrow afternoon where it crosses the Cedar river. The Iowa River is expected to crest on Tueday but in the meantime it is expected to cause a lot of damage here in Iowa City. Several major roads have been closed already and traffic is beginning to get pretty bad. By tomorrow, the Army Corps of Engineers is going to increase the flow of water out of the Coralville dam to 40,000 cfs (cubic feet per second). When I was in scouts, we used to raft the American river at 3000 cfs and thought we were hitting it big when the flow was up to 3500 cfs. Even at that relatively low flow, there were a number of class 3 rapids. Can you imagine what the river would be doing at over 10 times that flow?

We are fortunate to live at a high spot in Iowa City but so many people in Eastern Iowa have had so much taken from them. Our prayers are with them.