On the monsoon season

Ah, the weather has cooled a bit now. I am told this is the monsoon season. I thought monsoons involved torrential rains and floods.


Oh. That'd be our "yard" being submersed - the spouting she canna take nae more! It can't take the amount of rain falling and we have our own Niagara Falls every time it rains for more than about 10 minutes. This time, though, we were going for Victoria Falls instead....


If that isn't a flood, I don't know what is! Four inches, that's 10cm, of rain in about two hours got most of Fort Collins quite excited! The creek down the bottom of the hill got very excited! So did we! We went and inspected the creek and huddled in the rain, afraid to get under the big trees due to the excessive displays of lightning but afraid to leave their shelter.... Our neighbour took us out driving around town to see how bad the floods were. Some houses had to be evacuated - they are too close to the flood plain or in a drainage area. No trailer parks got washed away this time, and only small lives were lost (two critters that I know of) unlike the flood just over 10 years ago.


Our place was nice and high on the hill - it will have to be some flood to wash us away (though water did get in the garage and found the ONLY thing worth anything in there - our brand new unassembled chairs....). However, the watering systems around here are working on undermining us - the amount of water that is poured on the grass around here is astounding!

Some during and after shots (excuse the dimness of the flood shots - it was twilight):

The bike path at the bottom of the condos


the "falls" (a concrete weir)


Sunset on the 3rd, I think, when the creek is still running hard but much lower :-)


The clean up crews worked overtime clearing out the paths. They were still hard at work yesterday when I rode out eastwards along the Spring Creek path but in most areas apart from the flattened grass and the odd bit of mud you would never know it had flooded a week ago. Bravo to them for getting out the waders and going above and beyond (including above the waders) in clearing things up!