June 21, 2013
It had been raining and continued to rain, and rain, and rain. In Calgary and in the mountains. The result: 100 year record floods in the Bow Valley River flood plains and along other rivers in the foothills. In Calgary record flooding with about 10% of Calgarians were evacuated from their homes The city closed off downtown Calgary, which is on the floodplain, so many of us could not get to work for about three work days (Friday, Monday and Tuesday). Some not for over a week.
On June 21, as I was not able to go to work, I was home and decided to walk over to look at the river and see exactly what it looked like. We can see it if we walk about 3 minutes to the park about a block from our house. This is what we saw:
I thought we'd be the only ones out in the pouring rain - but apparently we aren't the only crazy ones - in fact there was actually a line up of vehicles waiting for a parking spot to get a look at the river from a safe vantage point.
This is usually the river and two separate settling ponds. Here they sort of blend together.
Note the train on the bridge. I learned that they park trains on the train bridges to keep the bridges from floating away in flood situations.
Storm water gushing up into the settling pond.
The Mayor declared "the river closed" - always someone...
Normally we enjoy walking around down there looking at the birds.
Hard to see - but across the river, backyards are flooded in Bowness.
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