Adventures In Flash Flooding Or The Trip We Never Should Have Made To The Dells. (Photo Essay)

Today we had wanted to try to see the Cranes since a seven hour evacuation forced us not to go yesterday. Well, they were closed today as well probably due to some earlier storms.

So, we decided to see how the kittens at Thunder Valley were. It was indoors and should the weather be bad we had shelter.

So we set out noting how dark the sky was. The weather advisories out were only for floods. We thought we were in for more... and we'd be fine at Thunder Valley in that too.

Off we went. We noted the unnatural sky with dread that today would be a repeat of yesterday.


The dark skies seemed worse as we got out on the road. Still no weather advisories out except for flooding.


We saw farmer's fields that had been flooded from yesterday's downpours.


The skies still looked a lot more threatening than they were predicting. At four PM it looked like it was almost night time.


A section of the sky where it was brighter for comparison of what it should have looked like.




It cleared up in front of us, but it was still dark in the back window.


We hit just about where Ringling Road was (a haunted road) there was a downpour. We could hardly see. We slowed down and once at the Dells we stopped at a gas station. The roads had a great deal of water in them and we knew we had to stop - even if momentarily.

Shortly after we stopped a cop came along and blocked off the road we used to get into the gas station.

Not long after we stopped we spied a cop on the corner where we had just come in. The road was blocked off!


I'm not sure if the flooded road shows well here. These were all shot through a rain soaked window, so the clarity isn't the best.



The other side of the road had cars backed up. There were a bunch of rocks behind the gas staion and there was water pouring off them. It looked like a RIVER. That was what flooded the road.

The brown in this shot is the flooded road. The water was brown from running off those rocks.


We decided to fill up on gas - which we NEVER do, but we thought that we would have to do extra driving in the event that we hit more blocked off roads.

While we filled up I noticed this water by the gas pumps. Everything was flooded.


A closer look at the water.


I saw a duck and laughed thinking boy what a lot of us wouldn't do to drive a duck right about now. LOL


A tow truck came out. Someone was stuck on the other end of the blocked off road.


We finally decided to go back home - despite being closer to Thunder Valley. We knew that in the past the road to Thunder Valley had water on it and there was nowhere near this much water then.

The flooded road we were on.. the saide we were on was not as flooded thankfully.



On the way home there wasn't much flooding on the road, but a lot in the fields.


Another flooded field.


Then we had a horrible surprise. The road we were on was flooded!


We pulled into another gas station and surveyed our options. The water was as high as the car wheels at that time.

Gideon was thirsty for a soda so we went in and got one. In that five minutes the water went up to the car's headlights. We watched in shock as a car went through it. We expected to see them get stuck in it... miracously they didn't.


This is a shot of the road flooded without shooting through the window. Sorry it's kinda crooked but I took it fast to avoid camera damage, lol.


At this time a cop blocked off this road. We were surprised that they waited until the water was up to the car headlights to block it off.

One last shot of the road on the way out. Insane.

We got home safely, and minutes later we heard a series of sirens. I'm sure someone somewhere got stuck.

We also have flooding in our yard and in the neighboring yards. There's been more than a million dollars in damage from this weekend's weather.

What a wasted day.