got a rain story?

[tokugawa]

Thinking about the interstate bridge washout in CA reminded me of an event many years ago.

  I was driving through the empty desert late at night, way too fast,in a pouring rain, on my way to NM to do some skiing. Way up ahead there was a flickering oil flare on the side of the road,(i said it was a long time ago..) and just as it occurred to me to wonder what that was all about, the road dropped away into a wash-which had a 20 foot wide torrent of water going through it. Too late to stop, so I accelerated going down into it. For the first bit the car sort of skidded on top of the water, then dropped in and sent a massive wave of water up completely obscuring the view ahead. No point to backing off, so kept the throttle on hoping to make it to the other side. The funny thing , just as the car broke onto solid ground sending a deluge of water everywhere, I looked left and saw a car parked right on the edge of the flood, with a guy inside smoking a cigarette- the bow wave crested completely over his car, and to this day I would swear he had his window down. I thought it best not to stop...

[Stand_watie]

Thinking about the interstate bridge washout in CA reminded me of an event many years ago.

  I was driving through the empty desert late at night, way too fast,in a pouring rain, on my way to NM to do some skiing. Way up ahead there was a flickering oil flare on the side of the road,(i said it was a long time ago..) and just as it occurred to me to wonder what that was all about, the road dropped away into a wash-which had a 20 foot wide torrent of water going through it. Too late to stop, so I accelerated going down into it. For the first bit the car sort of skidded on top of the water, then dropped in and sent a massive wave of water up completely obscuring the view ahead. No point to backing off, so kept the throttle on hoping to make it to the other side. The funny thing , just as the car broke onto solid ground sending a deluge of water everywhere, I looked left and saw a car parked right on the edge of the flood, with a guy inside smoking a cigarette- the bow wave crested completely over his car, and to this day I would swear he had his window down. I thought it best not to stop...

That guy was me in May, talking on the phone on my flooded county road with my window down being passed by a garbage truck. I still haven't gotten all the mud out of my car.

[charby]

The town I live in, if the ground is already saturated a 5" rain in a couple hours will cause enough flooding to cut the town into three parts and you have to drive about 25 miles out of the way to go from one side to the next.

[bedlamite]

It started to sprinkle when I was cooking dinner on the grill this evening.

[vaskidmark]

Does Hurricane Hugo count?  The stretch of Jeff Davis Highway I was on takes a 30-foot dip across a half-mile stretch.  As I was approaching that section trying to decide if I had beat the floodwaters the manhole covers all along that stretch blew.  Must have gone 10 feet in the air on top of a column of water.  Immediately that little dip in the road was filled and backing up along the level section.  And me going in reverse going just a bit faster.

What would normally ave been a 5-minute drive home took three hours of circling around trying to find roads that were not flooded.  Might explain why I'm not a big fan of corn maze.

stay safe.

[Tallpine]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Musselshell_River_flood

[Brad Johnson]

We had a local lake that rose more than 12 feet in under 24 hours.

Brad

[Perd Hapley]

Not a story; just a photo I took on 3 July this year. As you can see, there's no water in sight, despite it being one of the wettest Junes on record, and even though roads were flooded in various places, especially in nearby Kaskaskia Island. The '93 flood was at least 12' above street level.

[Sawdust]

My best friend and another friend were driving to Las Vegas to celebrate high school graduation. They came over a rise on the highway, and descended into the aftermath of a flash flood.

The car hydroplaned and flipped, throwing my best friend out of the car. The car rolled over him, and he died.

I was supposed to be in that car, but had to stay home as my family wanted to celebrate my birthday.

This happened 36 years ago last Monday.

[tokugawa]

That is a tragic story-sorry for your loss. I am not sure we ever make as good friends as the ones we have when we are young.

[Cliffh]

Once, while living in Chino Valley AZ, the clouds had been building up for a few hours, threatening rain but not delivering.  I'd gone into the back yard checking on the weather, came in the house, looked up and said "If you're going to rain, just go ahead and do it!"

Bad choice of words and timing.

The following rainstorm was called "a hundred year rain", since it only happens maybe once a century. 

The water was up to the front door sill.  It washed at least 4 tons of gravel from the front yard to the back yard.  One unfortunate couple was at the bottom of the grade - the water came in their back door and went out the front door.  The road to the  "bedroom community" north of town was under water for at least a week afterwards.  Folks had to drive to the raised railroad tracks and walk along them to get to the hiway.  Grocery shopping for them was a bitch.  Fortunately, some of the residents had been in town, so their cars were on the hiway side of the flooding.