Storm

I took these pictures from the parking lot at work just before the storm hit Thursday night. These photos do not do justice to the actual color of the sky at the time. It was a dark, funky green-grey color, and you could hear the tornado sirens going off in the distance. Then the wind whipped up and I went back inside, which was a good thing because the sky just opened up after that. I ended up staying late at work waiting for the rain to let up. I also figured that based on how hard the rain was coming down, and that the road I normally take was under construction, I was thinking there was going to be some flooding, but I had no idea how much.

It took me forever to get home once I finally did leave. My normal way home was flooded, as I thought, so I tried an alternate route. I got a little way and then ran into a flooded road. Then I tried a different way... also flooded. In all I hard to turn around 5 times before I finally found a dry road that I could take all the way home, and I had to go thru an area where the water was about ten inches deep to get there. I left work at 6:30 and got in the door at 7:12. Almost 45 minutes to go 6 miles.

We got lucky though. We saw onteh news a huge sink hole that opened up in Milwaukee on North and Oakland (just down from where Kris and I met). It ended up swallowing an Escalade and the stop light. There were also shots from many of the north shore suburbs... all about 3-4 feet underwater.

I-43 near Nicolet high school was shut down because there was construction going on and teh drainage grates had been covered resulting in completely flooding out the road. The high school itself had 3-4 feet of water in it (from what I heard). I am just glad I was able to get home. I had heard that one of the guys I work with who had to drive to the south side of Milwaukee spent 4 hours trying to get home (normally about a 30 minute drive). I don't know what the official total was but Kris told me that at 6:00 the weather guy pulled out a rain gage that they had at the station. Its capacity was 7" and it was completely full to the top, which was just over an hour from when it started.