"God willing and the Creek don't rise"*

Of course, its been almost 200 yrs since General Andrew Jackson completely crushed the last uprising so I don't think that is likely.

Around here we have had a lot of rain and the river is rising. I took some pictures of the Mississippi down near the St Anthony Falls last night. Please note perfect sky in pictures.

Back in 1993, I drove from St. Paul, MN through Iowa on my way to Springfield, IL and St. Louis, MO. There was so much water on either sides of the road I could have been pulling a water skier most of the way. The first day I had to take a several hundred mile detour and ended up across the state making an unplanned over night stay with a relative. The next day there was lots of water but I was able to take I-80 straight through. I didn't see anymore flooding until I got to St. Louis where everything around the arch was seriously underwater. I drove back via Chicago and WI.

I couldn't make that trip this week though, not only is Iowa seriously flooded, parts of Wisconsin are too. In the Dells, Lake Delton is just gone! 30 counties in Wisconsin are being declared a state of emergency. I think Iowa has about 90. Its bad all over the midwest, Minnesota is the least hit so far. We have just been getting tornadoes.


Here is some hail damage I saw last week outside the library:
The hail has been very localized, some streets get it and others don't. Every weekend for a while now we have had bad storms, a couple weeks ago I saw a wall cloud start to rotate, someone posted this picture of it on weather underground. I was too busy heading for the basement to take a picture.

Last night, after being down at the river where the sky was looking just fine, on the way home a few blocks from my house it started to rain out of nowhere. The wind started picking up as I was getting dropped off, and suddenly this chair comes flying by as I just make it inside. Lightening starts up, so I turn on the tv. There were warnings about 30 miles west of us, but nothing for us, then the sirens go off, all the sirens!

Where I live I can heard about 4 different sirens, so you can usually tell which way the storm is going based on which you hear. The tv still had nothing, then finally they interrupt programming with a severe thunderstorm warning with high winds. I suspect the wind gusts set the sirens off. I haven't seen any damage so far. My power flickered but stayed on, about 10 miles west of here 56,000 houses lost power. I bet they have trees down there too.

*quote is by Benjamin Hawkins