Floods Suck more when they hit home

/ damnhandy

It is a surreal feeling when you have a safety official knocks on your door to tell you have an hour to evacuate. Normally, the northeast doesn’t get wet like this, but man does it suck. This past Sunday night, my family and I had to leave our condo which runs along the Merrimack River in Downtown Lowell. This area is getting hit very hard from the driving rains we’ve been having this past weekend. Not to mention, we’re also getting the run-off from the additional rain the that the folks in New Hampshire are also getting pounded with.

Last night, I took a few shots of the Merrimack River, which is directly behind our condo building. This shot, taken at 7:00PM on 5/14 gives you an idea of how close this was getting to coming over the River Walk:

At this point, we had only about 2ft. left before the River Walk would be covered. Thankfully, the Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service has been an awesome place to get up to the minute details on how the flood waters on the Merrimack are progressing. According to them, the water was at 54.25ft, already 2.25ft above flood stage when I took that picture. Normally, it sits at 42ft but as of 5:15pm on 5/15, the water is at 58.82ft and it has breached the river walk seen in this image:

We could see our unit and we’re told we’re still ok:

But it is seriously close. What does suck is how insensitive some people can be in situatiuons like this. While taking the above shot, a pair of shit heads from UMass Lowell stood there laughing at how it must suck to live in our condo. While yes, it does suck it was nearly enough to prod me slinging my Nikon at thier heads. When my pregnant wife turned to them and mentioned that we do live there, their tune quickly changed.

In the Great Flood of 1936, the water covered the bridge I took these shots from. At that time, the waters rose to 68ft. This photo shows the building that we’re now in and how bad it was:

We’re “hopefully” not going to see anything like this. I have my fingers crossed that the projected cresting of 59.3ft is just enough to keep water out of our unit. We know the buildings utilities are shot and we won’t be back for several days. All we can do now is wait.

11 thoughts on “Floods Suck more when they hit home”

  1. Pingback: DamnHandy : » Another Spring, Another 100-Year Flood

  2. I hope your home is okay. We took a walk over to the Boott mills on Monday night and it was pretty scary over there. The water was almost to the windows (within inches) of their lowest floor. We live on Market Street and haven’t had any problems, but the canals were wicked high, too.

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  3. I hope your home is okay. We took a walk over to the Boott mills on Monday night and it was pretty scary over there. The water was almost to the windows (within inches) of their lowest floor. We live on Market Street and haven’t had any problems, but the canals were wicked high, too.

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  10. Hey there,
    I live in unit #206 and am looking forward to getting back in I have pretty much the same set of pictures that I have taken from my place, and then from around the building yesterday. I am sure this will leave quite a story to tell amongst the people in the building, but am not too happy about the damage, etc. I wish there was more to do than just sit and wait. I have the USGS site up with the river level and keep cheking it every hour. Good luck!

    – Bruce

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  11. Hey there,
    I live in unit #206 and am looking forward to getting back in I have pretty much the same set of pictures that I have taken from my place, and then from around the building yesterday. I am sure this will leave quite a story to tell amongst the people in the building, but am not too happy about the damage, etc. I wish there was more to do than just sit and wait. I have the USGS site up with the river level and keep cheking it every hour. Good luck!

    – Bruce

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