The Floods of 2006

You may have heard that Tucson was flooded over the weekend. We can say we lived through it, but not without some damage. It all started last week when Emila (a hurricane off Baja California)came up the coast really close to the coast and all that moisture got sucked into our area. The highs and lows were not in their normal monsoon pattern but with all that moisture it didn't matter. We began getting night time storms. Thursday night we had rain but our gauge got knocked over so we have no record for that. Friday night(actually early Saturday morning, about 4am) a storm began right over us in the Catalina mountains and did not let up until noon. Soon after it started we discovered water was coming up between our baseboard and our (fake)wood floor. We spent a long time trying to soak it up with towels before we decided the baseboards had to come off, then the drywall, then the wet insulation! The problem was in the window. We could actually see the water running down inside the window, but we suspect the flashing was installed incorrectly also. Tomorrow our window reps will come to repair that window and a few others with more minor leaks and we will see what they think. The next night (again it was really Sunday morning)we again had rain at 4am, but it only lasted 2 hours. This time the gauge read 1.5 inches. With the saturation of the soil from the night before we had water gushing down the hill and overwhelming and overflowing our riprapped drainage ditch. Of course, we had to be up that whole time with towels again. By now the roads around us were flowing in all the low spots. Our son had been visiting us and needed to go to the airport on Saturday. Luckily a friend with an SUV stopped by and offered to take him. I went along and we crossed several places where alot of water was flowing across the road. So Sunday morning we didn't think we could get out of our area and decided to skip church and try to fix the drainage channel. We spent hours moving rocks around and shoveling out sand, mud, and our upstream neighbor's landscape rock. We finally quit and decided we ought to try and get to the grocery store and check on my Dad. Again we had to cross flowing water even though the rain had stopped 8 hours before. Sunday night(you know-really Monday am) the rain started at 1:30 and kept up until around 7:30, starting and stopping. By now we were too tired to stay up, so we would get up, check how wet the towels were and go back to bed until we heard the next thunder of rain on the roof. All of these storms were accompanied by thunder and lightening by the way. That night produced 2.5 inches of rain. We are located in a small valley right up close to the mountains and our rain totals are most similar to what Mt. Lemmon reported. We will have to get another gauge and see how the 2 compare. We were higher than all other reporting stations nearby. The water again gushed down the hill, but all our work paid off. The water stayed inside the rock boundaries we had set for it. This was the day that produced the floods in Tucson. The ground just couldn't hold any more and it all went rushing down roads, gullies, washes, etc. into the Rillito and Santa Cruz Riverbeds(usually dry riverbeds!). That morning we watched one neighbor try 3 times to get out. The roads from our area were all flooded and uncrossable for hours. Even this morning(Tuesday)water was still flowing over them and a few miles away whole roads were actually demolished by the strength of the water. So here are a few photos to document our saga.