But after two consecutive days of 12" and 13" of rain, everything surrounding the creek was underwater.
I remember seeing a VW bug in a tree down by the CC Plaza that the flood deposited 15 feet up into a tree. It was a real sight. I also think there was a big gas explosion and fire at the CC Plaza too.
My wife and I spent several hours under the crawl space in our house earlier that spring, listening to the radio in car in the garage next to us, as they tracked a big funnel through town. It was loud and scary, even in the crawl space.
We survived but there was real damage all around us. Gas station gone at the corner. Apartment building one street over sliced in half. Roof on home 3 doors down lifted off and deposited in the backyard.
I also remember the black ice in the winter and all the accidents it caused. My wife and I were leaving one Saturday evening to have dinner at some friends. We backed our Chevy Nova out of the driveway and kept going up into the yard across the street. We couldn't get the car back on the street because of the ice. We ended up leaving the car in the neighbor's front yard. We called our friends and cancelled. We couldn't even get our car on the street.
Sorry, but I'll take Arizona and the dry heat anytime. :-)
I spent some time on city commissions and know all about their disasters. It sounds like you got a real bad exposure and I don’t mean to chuckle at your incidents.
All that aside, in the sixty plus years I was in that area, it was a damn fine place to grow up, get educated, get healthcare and then raise a family.