Flooding and Severe Weather

We awoke this morning to power surges, tornado sirens, and flooding. Not quite the Saturday morning I envisioned where we would sleep in and be lazy. But, thankfully we have no damage to our house or property and there are many who were not as lucky. After the tornado siren stopped, we went out to view the damage. You can see me standing in the middle of the street in front of house. Basically, a river was flowing through our side yard. There are three streets in our neighborhood and it slopes downward from the first to third street. We are on the middle street, so our house was high enough not to get any water, however several neighbors in the street at the bottom of the slope were not so lucky. But, the water was rushing right through our side yard and was at least a foot or more deep. Below is a picture of the water coming through - most of the water in the neighborhood drained this direction. You can see our washed out garden, too. Other pictures are posted here.

Other parts of the state were not as lucky. Several areas just north of us by 20 miles are devastated. We got upwards of 7 inches of rain over night and other areas around us got a lot more. All of the major highways out of Bloomington were closed and some of them even have sections washed out. Many local lakes had dams that were breached and thousands of people have evacuated their homes. It has been a week of weather as we had another day of flooding earlier this week and severe weather with tornadoes around us several different nights. Hopefully, the coming week will be a little more peaceful.