Yesterday I blogged about the flooding in Waterville, today I headed to Grand Rapids, Ohio to see how the flooding looked there. Plus I wanted to compare it with what I saw when the Maumee River flooded the downtown area in January 2005. What I saw today looks very similar to what I saw back then. The same businesses were flooded, the same streets were flooded and the same small section of US 24 was closed because the water was running over it. I took some pictures and shot some video.
Here are pictures from a small park alongside the river. I distinctly remember this bench looking just like this 2 years ago.
Normally this is a parking lot and -tho it doesn’t look like it- a canal.
This sign with the map on the left is almost 5 feet tall if I recall correctly.
This bench is closer to the river and, therefore, practically submerged.
Downtown Grand Rapids street where the water is probably not more than 2-3 feet deep in any one place, but that’s plenty of water to flood a building.
This is the area of Providence Metropark where the mule stalls are located. The mules pull the canal boat during the summer. If they were floating down the canal today they’d need to use seahorses. *bah bum pah*
Here is how US 24 looked today. It’s deep enough and the section of water is long enough that it would be too dangerous to allow traffic to drive through so a detour was posted.
Here’s a road that was also affected. It’s a road that only locals use so it’s not as vital that it reopens soon.
Beacause of the slightly distorted quality of video that comes from YouTube, especially when it’s shot with a video camera like mine, looking at the above pictures ahead of time will help you understand what I’m talking about. Yes that’s right, there’s narration today.
And on a separate note…
Here’s a picture of a corn field near my house that had flooded earlier in the week. It then froze and snow settled on top of the ice. When the water receded, it left a sheet of ice that collapsed into various weirdly shaped pieces. I thought it was a neat scene so I took a picture to share.
