We thought we'd do just a quick post to update things over the past several days. The wet weather has continued across the upper midwest -- as anyone who watches the news is aware of -- and Iowa has been hit particularly hard.
The rain has continued through early this morning, and has caused some pretty severe flooding on the Des Moines and Raccoon Rivers in this area. Downtown Des Moines has some isolated flooding, primarily due to the necessary opening of the spillway on the dam at Saylorville Lake north of the city, which just compounded the overall heavy flow on the river. The Corps of Engineers had to open the spillway to avoid possible failure of the dam backing up the lake -- which is at its highest levels since the infamous 1993 floods in this area.
Also making the news is the tornado spawned by yesterday's storms which killed 4 Boy Scouts and injured many more at Little Sioux, just north of Omaha/Council Bluffs, on the Iowa/Nebraska border. Fortunately no tornados were part of last night's weather through here, just rain, rain, rain.
The good news is that the forecast for the next several days shows some promise, with the rain probability tapering off through Sunday. Today is our day off, but we're sticking pretty close to here as almost everywhere else is totally waterlogged. Here at the park, things are relatively dry - at least in comparison to the rest of the area - so we'll just stay around here and get some things done - we may even go over to the park to play tourist and ride a few of our rides. Our plan is to be able to be back on the bikes by this weekend, and finally start to get some mileage in -- RAGBRAI is only 37 days away, and we need to get back in better shape. We've finally received all of our ride information and credentials, including a coveted support vehicle pass, which enables us to take the motorhome to stay in each night.
We'll post again soon with some pictures and some better news -- but for now all is OK here, particularly compared to the rest of the state.
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