Three Years After the Flood

This week marks the three-year anniversary of the Great Colorado Floods of 2013.

I was flying back home from England via Iceland, and saw the storm building as the plane approached DIA. I was stunned by the storm and took a low-quality video. While my family is lucky enough to live outside of Boulder, up a hill so we didn’t face any flash flooding, we did have severe damage in our basement.

I joked that I brought the rain back with me from England.

I ventured into Boulder the day after the flooding and rain stopped to see what I had missed. I took this photo somewhere along the Boulder Creek. I don’t know if the measurement is any sort of accurate, but that combined with the rushing water gives you a sense of how intense the situation was even after the rain had stopped. Plus this graffitoed expression probably captures the sentiment of many Boulderites at the time pretty well.

I also took a photo of some debris trapped along the creek path that was featured on one of my favorite sites, Earth Science Picture of the Day:

Another shot of mine, featured in an article about the flood, captured (for me) a moment of hilarity post-tragedy. This jogger was somehow unaware of the depth of the mud and just plowed straight into it, knee-deep and cartoonishly got stuck.

Another unforeseen bonus of the flood: I got to see Boulderites being stupid about a black bear momma and her cub!