Friday, June 20, 2014

Yet another storm of the century

Last year the storm of the century came on June 22.  This year it was early, arriving mostly overnight and then for most of the day yesterday.

Lots and lots of rain, the most ever blah, blah, blah . . .

It's always something.

We survived with only inconvenience instead of actual damage like last year and by the time futbol started today we were pretty much returned to normal.  TOPWLH departed on important errands for her parents, I settled down to watch Italy clinch their place in the knockout round.

Oops.  I have previously described the Italy, England, Uruguay group as the real group of death at this year's tournament.  All of that assumed that the fourth team, Costa Rica, was a minnow swimming with sharks.  After two rounds of games it turns out that this really IS a GOD except that TWO really good and top ranked teams are going home.  Costa Rica refused again to submit and Italy joins Uruguay as a team with a loss to this upstart.  As a further result England is eliminated.

The next game was France v. Suisse for leadership of the France group so I threw on my FC Nantes jersey and postponed my bicycle ride.  3-0 France at the half convinced me that it was safe to ride.  5-2 was the final.

We had that record rain so I went over to a place that I was pretty sure would provide interesting visuals of what happens after record rain.

This is a look upstream from the Falls towards the Hiawatha bridge.  None of us have ever seen water pouring through that opening in that volume.
I also doubt that any of us have seen the creek with water's edge marked off by police tape as a spot where we are not allowed to tread.

There is a water flow sensor over there in the Hiawatha gap.  I am not sure how long it has been in place but the morning newspaper reported that the flow yesterday was THREE times as high as had been recorded anytime in the last eight years.

So that's a lot of water.

Here's a look at the the young lovers immortalized in the poem.  They are out on a small island just above the falls but again, I believe this may be the only time they have been separated from their many admirers by a police line.
Just a FYI, Friday afternoon is not a very good choice of times to be at the Falls and Friday afternoon when the rate of flowage is historically high is really, really not a very good choice of times.

But I found a gap at the rock wall and got a video.
So that's a lot of water.

Today for fun I figured out how to edit the HTML to center the video and to make it larger.  It's not very hard.

Learning new things is good for your brain.

3 comments:

Jimi said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Jimi said...

That French team looks darned good. They could "go all the way."

That's a lot of water. Some guy rode a kayak over the falls this afternoon, purposely. He's apparently unhurt.

Santini said...

Pretty dramatic photos.

"It's always something." Indeed.