Rexburg Flood - July 15th

It had been a weird weather week. Beautiful days and then violent storms in the afternoon. So when it started raining, then pouring, then hailing, we weren't shocked at first. But then it just went on and on. Like nothing I'd seen before. The totals vary, but some parts of Rexburg got 2 inches of rain in about an hour and a half. I'm pretty sure we were close to that total.

Pile of hail in the backyard. 

 A layer of hail on the deck...hey, here is a sneak preview of the finished deck :)

It all just seemed kind of fun and exciting...until we looked out the front door and saw what was going on across the street at our neighbor's house. The water was just pouring off their yard. It was funneling down from the next street over. Isn't that crazy???

Luckily their house wasn't in the path of the raging river...but our shared garden was. Sad. Between the pelting hail and the torrential rain, it was looking pretty pathetic.

Despite our insanely steep driveway that slants down from the street, we fared very well. No damage to our house. And the garden damage was inconsequential (and minimal), It took us an hour or so before we realized that many of our neighbors had not been as lucky.

Quite a few neighbors had a couple inches of water in their basement. But two of our neighbors had their basement windows completely shatter as a river of water poured in and filled up the entire basement. It was unreal. Horrifying. Honestly, it was like something from a disaster film. In my friend Jen's basement, her parents had left ALL their belongings when they went on a mission to Mexico. So a lifetime worth of journals, pictures, memorabilia, books, documents, collectibles, etc were covered in 7 feet of muddy water. Immediately the church members pitched in. We went picture by picture and sometimes page by page in journals trying to clean off the mud and dry things out. It was painstaking, but we were able to save a lot of it.

There is tons of crazy footage online of roads that look like rivers, college buildings with water running down the stairs, and apartment complexes with water up to the door knobs. Google BYU-Idaho Flood or Rexburg Flood if you want to see more images. So unreal.

Amazingly the damage was taken care of quickly. So many people helped in the physical clean up or donated items and money to help the families most affected by the flood. It was a surreal experience that we will not soon forget.