St CHARLES, Mo. -- So far I'm safe where I'm at, but I may have to take a different route to work. My house is three blocks from the Missouri River, but it's on a hill. From what I understand, even the '93 flood didn't get much past Riverside Drive / S. Main Street.
The flooding sounds really bad, but the land that is flooding here is soccer fields and a sod farm, at least so far. Here's what it looks like on my drive to work.
I grew up about 20 minutes from Plainfield, Illinois, the small city just south of Chicago that gets wiped out by tornadoes every 10 years or so. I experienced my first earthquake back in April, but the flooding is a completely different animal. We've known for weeks that the water was coming, so there's that stress. Then, now that the water is here, we don't know if we're going to be able to stay in our homes, or if we will be able to get to work. The water is expected to stay high for quite a while, too.
They've had to move the Fourth of July festivities away from the riverfront in St. Louis. The Arch grounds are closed because the parking garages have been flooded for about a week. They'll have to change the Fourth of July festivities here in St. Charles because we usually shoot the fireworks off at the river front.
Even when the creek in my hometown in Illinois used to flood, it wasn't too big of a deal. A few of the houses near me would have water in the basements, and the water would usually be gone in a few hours.
For the last eight years, I've taken the beauty of the Missouri River for granted. I found it kind of neat that I lived this close to the river that Lewis & Clark took in 1804 to explore the Louisiana Territory. Now, though, I would take that creek in my hometown over the Missouri River again.