Floods

Iowa City is getting water-logged again in a way they haven't seen since 1993. I was bouncing phone calls with my mother about wedding stuff yesterday and she matter-of-factly informed me that she had gone out with my sister to 'go sand-bagging' as if it were a perfectly normal, relaxing thing to do on a Friday afternoon.

Iowa City kind of got screwed in 1993, since large, modern and attractive housing tracts had been built all over the flood plain of the Iowa River. (Naturally developers calculated their chances based on a 500-year-flood scenario, not thinking that it would actually happen anytime soon.) Anyway, the rain's been coming hard and the Army Corps of Enginners has been increasing outflow at the Coralville Resevoir and water is set to top the spillway by Tuesday. The last time that happened, a bunch of water ripped open a Devonian Fossil Gorge. Who knows what'll rip open this time...