We had extremely heavy rainfall near the house. Warnings were going off around the area. Danelle and I decided to dress up and go out for a walk. During the walk, we stopped and helped redirect traffic on South Brentwood blvd to allow a bus to back up and turn around safely. The driver was having issues backing up and had hit a utility pole before we stopped to help. We walked/waded through one section where the water was knee deep!
Here are some of the photos and video of what we saw on our walk. Water over the new trail. The water is up at least 10 feet here,
Its always nice to have friends. In this instance, JoJo called and asked if I wanted to paddle part of the flooded Meramec river. I’m always up for that. I packed up and met them at a place I’ve never paddled before in south Saint Louis. Here are a few shots of our paddle.
The water was nearly over the roof of this shelter. Jason was up on a structure that holds the electrical transformer above the flooding they know will occasionally happen.
Hard to tell what is flooded vs. normal Meramec River.
The best part of this whole paddle was what I called the “water trail”. We paddled through a wooded area where a paved bicycle path is. The water was high, but still clear enough to look down and see it. What made it feel like a trail was the fact that we had a tree canopy over our heads and a clear path ahead. Very cool feeling. Then we found this sign and were able to pull it up out of the water for a photo before putting it back. Its about 5 feet over the trail here.
We just finished recovering this tire that we would dispose of later. There is also a traffic cone. Trying to make the world a better place!
Jason relaxing. We don’t paddle this boat much. Part of the reason is because the seats are not very comfortable. He is trying to find some relief.
JoJo was kind enough to grab my phone and get a shot of us.
I love the reflection of the under side of the bridge on the water.
If you’re curious where we went, here is a screen shot. The gray line going north to south is I-55 for reference.
We went out to our property to check it out after the flooding. The main part that we use is high up and won’t flood, but we were still curious. The Big River was up a ton and was still coming down.
Once out there, we installed some new lines for the solar panels to clean things up.
We walked down the road to the water, but couldn’t go too far.
And finally on our way home, we tried taking highway W (which said closed) and ended up turning around when we got to the water.
We were in the midst of several days of hard rain. I took some photos out of the window, then decided to go exploring.
At the creek near the house, it was running high and violent. Large waves would come and go and large debris was pushed downstream.
Lots of flooding on streets and several businesses under water.
We ended up at Litzinger Road Ecology Center (Danelle’s work) to move important stuff to higher ground as there was a large likelihood of flooding. Here are photos from the building looking at the flooded creek.
Possibly most annoying was the water in my basement. Many people had it worse than me, so I’m not complaining, but explaining. I pulled out 300 gallons of water in 1 day and most of the water coming in was going straight to the drain.
In the aftermath, we found an un-used wedding present that was packed away deep on a shelf. Its still good 15 years later.
I’m obsessed with the Meramec flooding! Today I drug the whole family back out to the river to see where it was at. The kids had been out of town and didn’t get to see our two visits earlier in the week.
This must be foreshadowing…
So Corvin and I walked farther down the road to see the mess.
Tons of worms died on the road.
Just see the stripes of the road in the water.
Corvin stepped on a fish and didn’t want to go any farther…
