Just a public service announcement. :)
According to my husband, there is a Jeep stuck there with water up over its hood...that's some really high water!
475 flooded at Corey Road
Comments ... #
Statement as of 6:19 AM EDT on July 03, 2008
The National Weather Service in Cleveland has issued a
- Flood Warning for small streams in...
Lucas County in Northwest Ohio...
- until 1015 am EDT
- at 619 am EDT several roads remain closed by high water
across portions of Toledo and western Lucas County. Rainfall
amounts of 3 to 5 inches have occurred from Toledo westward to
near Holland and Swanton. Swan Creek was reported to be
overflowing its banks.While light rainfall will continue at times through the morning it
appears that water levels will begin to decrease. Flooding is
expected to continue through the morning. Additional creeks and
streams may approach or exceed bankfull levels as the waters recede
through the morning.
Local Storm Report07/03/2008 0400 am
Toledo, Lucas County.
Flash flood, reported by law enforcement.
Lucas County sheriff reported that Swan Creek in western
Toledo was overflowing and that several roads were closed
WTOL story updated as of 7:52 a.m. this morning :
Flood-prone Toledo neighborhoods are dealing with deep water again after a storm that dumped 3.5 in. of rain beginning around 8 p.m. Wednesday. Flooding also closed a portion of Interstate 475 west of Toledo Thursday morning after two vehicles became stuck in high water around midnight. The motorists were unhurt.The storm's arrival had set off tornado sirens in the Toledo area, and Lucas County sheriff's deputies reported a rotating funnel cloud on the west side of the county, near Holland. High winds blew down trees and power lines, and Toledo Edison says around 3,000 customers lost power. Most were back up by Thursday morning.
WNWO story :The heavy rains caused several streets to flood. The underpass on Reynolds, in between Airport Highway and South Street, flooded out. Also, the underpass on Fearing, near Detroit is flooded. There's also flooding on Douglas near Monroe, and near Central.
94 was flooded in Detroit. Vehicles were spraying 30 foot waves over the wall into oncoming traffic. Engineering at its finest.
Why aren't drainage pathways redredged or supplemented with artificial waterways?
Or why don't people use rain barrels to help alleviate neighborhood flooding?
But then again why would anyone buy a house/live in a neighborhood that floods? I think Noah taught us that flooding was a dangerous liability.
We have a rain barrel, but a 55 drum fills up very quickly in that type of rain.
Households would have to chain barrels together to handle a heavy rainfall. It might be easier to move to the desert southwest and have Lake Erie water pumped down there.
I wouldn't mind that set up. We have one barrel that is fed by the garage's roof. I just put it in place this spring.
We use it for our many potted plants and, very soon, will be hooked up to a drip hose some backyard landscaping.
Should read read "drip hose for some backyard landscaping".
Last year, I used a 30 gallon trash can as a test "barrel" under the downspout that handled the most water. I used the water to nourish our little produce garden in the backyard. That rain water came in handy. I was surprised at how little rainfall was needed to overflow the can when it was nearly empty, and we have a small house, so not a large rooftop surface area. This one downspout could easily support a few large barrels chained together.
But since we signed up with a local CSA this year, we're not planting a backyard garden. And since most of our flowers are Oak Openings natives, they don't need any special attention like watering during dry periods. Using organic lawn care methods, I don't water the lawn. So I canned the rain can/barrel idea for now. But it's amazing how much potential water could be collected from April to November from a small rooftop home with three downspouts. Need a storage tank. Could we sell rain water?
A few saved links :
- RainBarrelGuide.com
- A Spouse's Guide to Building the Perfect Rain Barrel System
- Great Lakes Green Initiative : Rain Barrel
Wild Ones Toledo Chapter >> Toledo Botanical Garden
Our chapter meets the second Tuesday of the month October - April, 7:00pm at the Toledo Botanical Gardens Conference Center. For directions and such, please see Toledo Garden website. We also have various nature hikes, education and outreach programs going on during the growing season at places to be determined all over NW Ohio. These take place on the second Saturday of the month from May to September.
From an e-mail ahead of the Wild Ones February 2008 meeting :
This month Marcus Ricci, from Lucas Soil and Water Conservation District, will be talking to us about installing rain gardens and the Lucas County Rain Garden Initiative. We will be meeting at the Conference Center at TBG on February 12 at 7 p.m. for this very informational session. He will probably also be covering a little bit about storm water retention on your property, and in that vein, I would like to pass this file on to City of Toledo Residents. See the attachment [pdf file], Toledo Residents can by a rain barrel at a reduced cost!
The discount has obviously expired, but it was associated with the New England Rain Barrel Company for those who don't want to assemble their own rain barrel.
According to ODOT's web cam it's cleared up now.
posted by GraphicsGuy on Jul 03, 2008 at 02:07:37 pm #
So assuming 4 downspouts per house. 220 gallons a house times how many houses on a road. It still would alleviate the situation if not temporarily. If anything it buys the sewer systems time to process it all. Overflow from the barrels can be routed back to the flood zones, where it all goes unabated now.
I think Chicago has slow intake sewers designed not to overload the system.
A long term solution would be green rooftops and something that absorbs water a little better than boring useless ornamental grass. But you know the old saying: Gots tos keeps ups wit da Joneses, dawg.
Just as an FYI for anyone that comes out here to the sticks. Channel 13 was out here this morning, but I STUPIDLY drove through it last night. Schwamberger Road between Bancroft and Door, Door between Schwamberger and Raab, Frankfort between Schwamberger and Raab and Bancroft between Schwamberger and Raab are still impassable for anything less than a 4WD with a good lift.
Divine intervention or something got me through it in my mini van last night, but I had water up over the hood of the van 3 times and almost stalled twice. I know, my own stupidity, I "assumed" since I knew the road like the back of my hand and had driven through the same roads during the 2006 flooding that I'd be fine. It's a mistake I'll never make again!
posted by justsimplyholly on Jul 04, 2008 at 07:46:18 am #
In 1988 when we had to hook into the sanitary sewers we talked the Lucas County Sanitary engineer into allowing us to keep our septic tank and leach bed as a huge under ground rain barrel. He watched as our contractor filled the old cement septic tank partially with large stone so that it was unusable as a septic system. We then hooked all our downspouts with underground plastic pipe to the septic tank. It was a huge job, especially getting every thing trenched at the right slope and fitting together with an odd assortment of connections and plumbing parts. But it has worked perfectly ever since. It has never backed up or clogged. We keep the gutters clean and the downspouts screened. We put no roof run off into the strom sewers. Our oak trees get the benefit of the rain water through the old leach bed. We had no idea how important this would be. I just wanted a water source for the oak trees because they would be losing the water from the septic system and leach bed. Little did we know.
Don't buy any barrels at all! ... before going to any of a number of metal plating shops around Toledo, like P&J. These places get very sturdy metal and plastic barrels, that largely hold innocuous supply chemicals like acids and bases. These companies are cutting up or disposing of these barrels often enough. Just ask politely for them and you're likely to find you can get one or two. They may even helpfully wash them out for you, which is a good thing since their wastewater systems should be fed into a chemical-recovery system, and your home drains don't. But acids and bases are fairly ho-hum when it comes to wastes, and you should be able to clean these barrels out with little effort and no danger.
Hopefully, if enough people go to these places for barrels, they will wise up and re-sell the barrels for modest prices ($5 each would be nice) and get a little cost recovery. The plastic barrels are particularly nice, being around 1cm thick. They are too heavy for liftable garbage barrels, but would make great rain barrels.
Well, the info is finally on the news...when my husband called me to ask what was up on 475, I couldn't find any info on any of the local news sites. But, they just finally did a breaking news update across the screen that police are asking people to avoid 475.
posted by mom2 on Jul 02, 2008 at 10:43:59 pm #