I hate this crap. After dealing with a major flood last May, I awoken yesterday to someone knocking at my door at 5am telling me to move my car because the parking lot was flooding. Here’s a view about 3 hours after the door knock:

It didn’t take too long for us to realize that they’d be evacuating us soon. So now we’re displaced again, along with a baby. Good times! 🙂 If you care to take a look at 100-Year Flood #2, you can see them here.

A neighbor of mine sent this image along which shows our building from a higher elevation:

Thanks to Jim Pericotti of Lowell for taking this shot! While it totally sucks being displaced like this, it still is an awesome sight to take in. Now it’s a just a waiting game to see how long it takes to move back in. 😦

What a difference a day makes! While we still haven’t gotten specifics on our unit, the word is that the first floor is dry. As of now we’re cautiously optimistic considering that the river will remain above the flood stage through Thursday. And as you can see here, the water has gone down significantly already:

We can actually see grass below our window!

Through all of this, you realize how small the world can be. A buddy of mine told me that he and a co-worker had to go to a trade conference this week and left over the weekend. This co-worker also lives in our building. Unfortunately, he also owns the Honda Element. The poor guy didn’t have a chance.

Behind the building, the story is pretty much the same:

We probably won’t be allowed to move back in for some time. We may be able to go in by week’s end to have a look, but any damage to the boiler room and electrical system still needs to be assessed. If you’re interested, I have posted some additional shots on my photoblog.

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.