Here comes the floody floody!

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Pineapple Express started unleashing yesterday. Atmospheric river dumping rain everywhere. Everything that can flood has. At least 2 major highways are closed due to mudslides, a couple towns have areas that have been evacuated, all low lying areas/roads are flooded, there are pics of cars in one city with water up to their rooftops. Water is squirting out of storm drain manhole covers like fountains, at least one train station flooded and was closed last night, some neighbourhoods in certain areas have access closed off because of concerns about possible land/mudslides. Some homes will be ruined by flowing mud and water, but so far I haven’t heard of any completely sliding away. I knew o should have bought that hovercraft that was for sale on marketplace a couple months ago.

Goooo climate crisis, go!

This is starting to happen where I am. It didn't rain pretty much at all since May and all of a sudden it recently started pouring rain + being horrendously windy. There are constant rainstorms and trees can't handle the amount of rain, so even without wind they are falling over. There's a lot of flood warnings and floods starting to happen.

I just read someone’s post about the river they were parked near rising 3’ in 10 minutes stranding their off grid rv home. Their family of 3 is safe with a bunch of other off grid homeless people, but one of the others said they saw 2 men swept away by the river 500 yards from where they are now.

Almost certainly those 2 men drowned. And there will be others. And possibly cars/houses/people buried in mudslides.

I was hoping last night this wouldn’t be deadly, but now my hope is that the death toll is minimal.

Coquihalla highway (MAJOR route) between Othello (dunno where that is, must be a tiny dot on the map) and Hope (last town in the Fraser Valley before you’re up in the mountains) is.. gone.



There are countless pics of overflowing rivers, logs running down streets, cars and buildings flooded. My bet is this is the worst flood damage & dollar value damage done in BC in the history of BC - especially since there’s so much more built up now than 150 years ago. But yeah, it’s bad.

The entire city of Merritt, about a 3.5 hour drive from me, population approx 8,000 people, is being evacuated due to flooding.

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/globalnews. ... oding/amp/

You gonna be okay, Goldie?

Totally fine on my block - no flooding gonna happen there.. but there are roads & highways overflowing with water. A few intersections on my way to the office completely under water.. manhole covers hovering above the ground with water gushing out underneath them. Ditches 6' deep and 10' wide completely filled and spilling over onto highways.. several highways are closed throughout the Province, entire towns/cities evacuated, roads/highways washed out.. some bridges that Might get washed out.

I'll personally be fine, but the entire Province as a whole is completely underwater and it's going to need some major repairs & drying out. I just have to be careful coming around curves to low lying areas that I don't drive headlong into some deep pond and murder my car. Coulda maybe happened last night but I managed to kinda hydroplane around the edge of the floodwater vs. head straight through the deepest part.

Canadian Armed Forces are assisting in rescue operations. Several places have declared states of emergency. A mudslide on a local highway has trapped hundreds of people and they're doing helicopter rescues now shuttling people back to the non-trapped side of the slide.. s**t's gettin' real.

Dunno where in BC this is, but this is the kind of thing happening:

I just clicked through ~80 pics of flood damage across BC. I would not be surprised if the total damage done is in excess of $1 Billion.

It's really bad. Probably the worst ever. Entire valleys flooded, towns under water, roads washed out etc.

There was enough rain fast enough to flood & sink boats that were moored to docks... now they're underwater still tethered to the dock.

And I bet people died and more will - especially if they're stranded somewhere with no way out and no way to call for help.

At least there are some posts from people offering dry high ground places to stay for people displaced.. but man, there are a LOT of people who have to move like Right Now because their homes are destroyed.. and there's ~nowhere to move To thanks to our R-word real estate market and near zero vacancies. All this while many, MANY, homes sit completed and empty because they're not actually homes to live in, they're just places for the world's wealthiest to park a bunch of excess cash in condo sized safety deposit boxes.

Who knows, maaaaybe this storm will have people popping locks on empty homes and seeking shelter?

We're on our own now.. apparently. The only way to access the rest of Canada is via the USA - and the land borders are still kind of closed. Hmm, I wonder if any of these are simple clears Or if they're all engineering nightmares and we really can't have access to commercial vehicle (truck) traffic for the foreseeable future.. Naaaah, they'll re-route and dip down into the USA and pop back up here - but still - the scale of flood devastation is.. massive.

Gosh!

I havent seen any of this in my US Washington DC area news. Maybe Ive missed it.

I guess that you need to stay put, and to not drive anywhere.

At least you still have electric power, apparently (else you wouldnt be here chatting on the Net).

Why would I not drive anywhere?

Just gotta stay local. There were random streets and intersections closed due to flooding yesterday, but I don’t think too much more rain fell last night. So it isn’t worse. The highway closures are all on the way out of the lower mainland of BC, so as long as you don’t have to leave the area it’s fine.

The closest couple road closures are approximately 50km away. From Vancouver International Airport to Hope - the last small city in the Fraser Valley before the main highways through the mountains that connect to the rest of BC and Canada is 163km - just over 101 miles. We have plenty of area in between that we can drive around in mostly fine.

The guests that were staying one night have now stayed 3; they can’t leave as all highways are closed. The only route would be South through Washington state, but they don’t have passports with them nor covid tests etc.

All freight will have to get routed through the USA temporarily - which I’m sure is a logistical nightmare so maybe we’ll just run out of a few things. It’s probably mostly crap we don’t need, anyways, and I’m sure we have a big enough crap supply coming in the ports.

Yes, we have power. No major power outages I’ve heard of anywhere. Cars washed away in mudslides and down rivers, otoh.. :/ There’s definitely going to be a death toll from this.

The city of Abbotsford was still under evacuation orders this morning as water is still flowing down the mountains and rising..

This is what it looked like yesterday, and apparently it's still getting worse:



That round building on the right is "Castle Fun Park," - video game arcade, minigolf, gokarts etc.. but not anymore I guess.

Uhoh.




I read a few fb comments about this. There was a pump house installed in a lake in 1920 that took 2 years to drain the lake in order to build on and farm the land there. The pump failed and water is still coming down the mountains big time. Emergency GTFO ASAP evacuation order. One comment said they approximate it to take about 1 week to completely refill the lake that's been drained for 101 years - and it's 3-4x the sized of a popular local lake; Cultus Lake - which is not exactly a tiny lake.. Cultus = Area: 6.3 km² Length: 12 km Surface elevation: 47 m Shore length: 14 km.

If that pump house can't be brought back online.. Uhoh.

Helicopter video of some of the damage done to the Coquihalla Highway (the highway my grandfather died building)

https://twitter.com/RobinMonks/status/1 ... 6410194949

Umm, yeah. It won't be fixed this Winter.. or probably next year. Some MAJOR engineering challenges to overcome to fix all that.