Duluth Flood

It's been a wild couple of days up here in Duluth.  We've had some unrelenting rain over the last few days coupled with thunderstorms, and last night into this morning the city literally couldn't take it anymore when the sky opened up and torrential downpour consumed everything.

Duluth is built on a giant hill, and unfortunately that meant that everything flowed down hill- everything from sand, rocks, to chunks of pavement.

Sinkholes appeared, swallowing cars whole.

The parking lot by the Duluth Co-op (about a five minute bike ride from my house) collapsed at one end when the creek finally broke through.

The creeks running through town exploded in size, overrunning their banks onto lawns, roads, and finally dumping into Lake Superior.

All the pictures above were taken within the last day or so, and all but the one of Chester Creek (that one I took on my bike ride to work!) are from MPR's website where people have been uploading pictures all day.  I had to bike in to work this morning through more rain, being careful to avoid traffic, giant puddles that could be hiding sinkholes, and being incredibly thankful that I live higher on the hill than most.  

West Duluth is flooded, the mall area is flooded (seen above), and people are kayaking and canoeing down main roads.  I've never seen anything like it.
Interstate 35 was even shut down- the tunnels were completely filled with water and sediment.

We're pretty good at dealing with really cold and blizzards, but with something like this all you can do is pick up the pieces and see what you can do to help.