Did someone say they needed rain?

[Dweller_Benthos]

So in another forum, we were talking about (off topic as usual, so I'm making this a new post to not hijack that one further) how the weather is dry in one place and wet in another. Anyway, we've been getting more than our share of rain lately. Yesterday it just went over the top. The county I live in got four inches or more of rain in just a few hours. Well, that means floods. This is the end of my road yesterday evening:

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That's the intersection I drive through every day. I drove through it just before this pic was taken and the water was starting to crest over the hood of the car. Very scary, and I really shouldn't have driven through it but was committed at that point and several others had already gone through, but they had large SUVs and pickup trucks. I have a sedan lol. But I made it through and waited on another roadway for an hour or so until I could get to the next intersection and make my way past more flooding there to get home safely.

Here's another shot of that same intersection from the other side. Note the van in the convenience store parking lot with water almost over the front wheels. This is actually a little lower water level than when I went through there.

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This is the bridge I go over every day, or at least what's left of it. This is just up the road from the intersection in the first two pictures. I had to take a slight detour to get around it on my way to w0#k today.

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I guess this would be considered a century storm as they like to label things these days. I remember my father talking about a rain storm like this when he was a kid, in the 30s or 40s that washed out the roads and caused floods like this.

[PZ]

 

Man, that's bad!  We sometimes have a bit of flooding especially when winter ends, but nothing like that in the 3-+ years I've lived here. I used to think that I would be okay driving in that kind of flooding because I have a tall pickup, but then realized that there could be a big hole in the street that I couldn't see.

I would not drive through any significant water unless I saw someone else drive through safely first 

[Art Blade]

pretty impressive, D_B.

if you guys want to get an idea what it looks like over here (not far from where I am) you might want to take a look at those pics/vids. Never mind the texts, the pics speak for themselves.

https://www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/zeitgeschehen/2021-07/unwetter-dauerregen-katastrophe-ueberschwemmung-fs

https://www.zeit.de/wissen/umwelt/2021-07/hochwasser-unwetter-eifel-klimawandel-starkregen-wissenschaft-statistik-beweis

https://www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/zeitgeschehen/2021-07/unwetter-katastrophe-hochwasser-rlp-nrw-todesfaelle-vermisste

[PZ]

Pretty impressively bad weather!

I'm missing the media in the second link 

[Art Blade]

it's available here.. maybe a local thing, "not available in your country" type of thing.

And yes, it's historically bad. Many are dead, more are missing. Villages got washed away.. it's unbelievable.

[PZ]

it's available here.. maybe a local thing, "not available in your country" type of thing.

And yes, it's historically bad. Many are dead, more are missing. Villages got washed away.. it's unbelievable.

I don't know what I'm missing, but I just don't see anything 

Funny thing - one of the pics you posted from the zeitung was on my local news as they were reporting on the severe flooding in the midwest, and in Germany!

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah the second link is paywalled, but the third one with the video of the town, that's incredible. That's a much larger river system than the little creek that caused the flooding in my area. That's more like the damage some places around here saw after hurricane Irene. That caused some towns to lose almost half their buildings.

I can say one thing, I have little problems driving during a snowstorm, but driving in the flood waters was extremely unsettling. I took a pic of the front of my car, you can see the grass and sticks lodged in the grill that were floating in the flood water as I drove through it.

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[Art Blade]

nice pic I am glad that you didn't come across a deep hole somewhere under water which is the biggest danger during floods. Happened here, someone thought they'd "just" pass the road and then sunk their car.

[Art Blade]

here more pics from us

https://www.zeit.de/wissen/umwelt/2021-07/hochwasser-in-deutschland-nrw-rlp-fs

[PZ]

Awful!

The second pic looks like my playground filled with Matchbox cars when I was a kid 

[Art Blade]

yeah.. it's unbelievable. Meanwhile over 140 dead, water receding in some regions while it's rising in others.

More pics.

https://www.zeit.de/wissen/umwelt/2021-07/hochwasser-deutschland-fotos-ueberschwemmungen-sonntag

[PZ]

This morning my wife and I were looking at pics taken in Germany and here in the U.S. - they look eerily similar. Then came up the topic of insurance. Some of the companies are now saying that certain areas are not worth them insuring because it is too expensive. Because the weather is ruining so many homes these days, and the numbers appear to be increasing per year, either insurance companies will need to hugely raise their rates or stop insuring some areas altogether.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yes I was thinking of that when looking at the one parking lot behind an apartment building I drive by every day. It was flooded with several cars, some with just the top of the roof sticking out of the water, and realized that insurance might not cover flood damage on a car, depending on the policy. As for homes, flood insurance is sometimes tricky or impossible to get, you can be covered for everything else, but not flood, and in that case, if your home is destroyed or unlivable, your only hope is that the federal government buys it, condemns the land and you can buy or build something elsewhere. If not, you're out of luck.

[PZ]

We're so hot and dry in my area the insurance companies will likely cover flood over fire 

[Dweller_Benthos]

Can't we make a big funnel or something, channel our water over to you? Another town nearby got hit by a local storm and they were flooded out yesterday. Three inches of rain in a few hours, and though it wasn't a huge amount of damage, the water caused issues in many places.