Thursday, June 12, 2008

Rain Soaked Wisconsin


We went to the AMA Superbike races at Road America in Elkhart Lake on Saturday. Started out as a beautiful day and then the rains came in the late afternoon. This pic, albeit a bit blurry, shows the bikes coming around the Bill Mitchell Bend well over 100+mph. These guys are really good and a bit crazy. It actually was really hot prior to the dark clouds, so we opted to take the motorcycle. It's a beautiful drive through a portion of the Kettle Moraine from Milwaukee to Elkhart Lake. On our way home we hit rain just north of Milwaukee and it was coming down fast and furious. We ended up with close to 4" of rain in a short period of time. The rivers and creeks were rushing, the streets were flooded and some cars even ended up swimming in some of the low levels. Lots of flooding in basements, etc. - luckily for us we are on high ground and only had a little bit of dampness.


This picture shows the "usually calm" Menomonee River running through Wauwatosa. This particular spot is wild to me because it is where a small creek enters the river. Typically we are able to jump across the creek or step across on exposed stones. Even our little Bailey has been brave enough to cross the water here even though she is petrified of getting wet. So this really shows us the amount of water the river has taken in.

Quite a few trees fell along the riverbanks due to the soil eroding underneath or the rushing of the water on the branches that normally hang over the river. This was a big tree!

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