Posted on 09/12/2013 3:25:37 AM PDT by ican'tbelieveit
http://kdvr.com/2013/09/12/live-blog-flash-flood-emergency/
Some great pictures and the latest updates...at that link.
Gosh, thanks GRRRRR!
Friday.
My brother and I drove around this morning.
Lots of ponding on roads and fields with minor flooding on the outlying roads.
The closer to Longmont it gets worse. I-25 and 119 at exit 240 has flooding westbound 119. Local access roads in low areas have some standing water but one lane open.
Not raining now, might have some light drizzle later in PM.
Many areas in S. Longmont are totally flooded out. We drove down to Erie and back and saw lots of fast waters.
I think all of this watershed eventually goes into the South Platte, then joins up with the Missouri and into the Mississippippi. Maybe, I guess.
Amazing low clouds are still hiding Long’s Peak and on west bound Cty 3 the vista of Boulder was right in front of us.
Thanks for the info, GRRRRR. I’m sure you know where to drive, and where not to, in those dangerous areas. I think I would be anxious driving around through those areas, but all I know of nature’s ravages are hurricanes. If you are correct, and I believe you are, the waters eventually come right on down our way through the Mississippi to the Gulf, and I might splash through water on the shore, which once flowed down the Rocky Mountains. Amazing!
Recently, I read one of the many travel journals of 19th century explorer, Isabella L. Bird, “A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains”. She was a middle-aged, English spinster who traveled alone by horseback wearing wool culottes under her wrap-around skirt. She was on her way back to England after exploring the Sandwich Islands, when she decided to venture into the Rockies during the fall and early winter of 1873. She climbed Long’s Peak, lived in a cabin, fell for a mountain man, and wrote about the real West. I think she was still traveling the world well into her 80’s.
She was a good, straightforward writer too. Here are the last lines of her Rocky Mountain adventure... “Mr. Fodder rattled so amusingly as we drove away that I never realized that my Rocky Mountain life was at an end, not even when I saw “Mountain Jim,” with his golden hair yellow in the sunshine, slowly leading the beautiful mare over the snowy Plains back to Estes Park, equipped with the saddle on which I had ridden 800 miles!
“A drive of several hours over the Plains brought us to Greeley, and a few hours later, in the far blue distance, the Rocky Mountains, and all that they enclose, went down below the prairie sea.”
I wonder what Isabella Bird would think of the drive up to Estes Park today? The beauty of the mountains and the sudden view of Boulder and the Plains are among the most breathtaking landscapes I’ve ever seen. When my brother, mother and I were heading for home, and I looked back, as Isabella did, at those glorious mountains, I felt like it was the last time I would ever see them. That was in 1999. I hope everyone will be okay.
Stay safe.
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