Many times in September, we get a little surprise snowfall, but not usually much.  Though I do remember the last day of summer one year, just getting a huge dump and ruining my garden since it had been so beautiful and the snow was unexpected.  But September in Colorado is really usually always one of the most beautiful months: sunny, warm days – cooler nights, clear skies.  Basically-lovely.

This rainfall ~ Devastating!  This from the news accounts on 9.13.13

The National Weather Service issued constantly-updated versions of a local area forecast, and one at 9:41 a.m. MDT reported a dire warning:

MAJOR FLOODING/FLASH FLOODING EVENT UNDERWAY AT THIS TIME WITH BIBLICAL RAINFALL AMOUNTS REPORTED IN MANY AREAS IN/NEAR THE FOOTHILLS

There’s no scientific definition of “biblical” but the flooding has been unlike anything local residents have ever seen before.

 {{Um, we all need Jesus.  That is Biblical!}}

So each time the meteorologists do the newscast, they answer the question evereyone wants to know, because we aren’t used to this much rain ever, but we are used to snow:

Well-if this had been snow, how much would it have been?

And we are hearing things like this:

In a 48-hour period Boulder got 15.38″ of rain, according to the news last night, so it would have been more than 15 feet of snow.  All at once – Yikes!

The numbers keep rising and rising on the amounts and there is so much confusion and reports of this and reports of that, so for the sake of not getting ahead of ourselves, we’ll use numbers from 3 days ago:

Reported by 7 am 9/13/13

Boulder 15.38″

Thornton 8.47″

Brighton 8.44″

Estes Park 8.23″

Aurora 8.2″

Colorado Springs 8.17″

Lyons 7.65″

Louisville 7.62″

Frederick 7.58″

Longmont 6.72″

If you look at what is normal for the Denver area in a whole year, wow!  As this article from the weather channel puts into perspective.

“The average annual precipitation (rain + liquid from melted snow) in Denver is 14.92 inches. That’s over three-quarters of the yearly average precipitation occurring in the span of a day or so!”

What really stinks is, though we are arid and always short on water, we aren’t even allowed to keep it.  It still gets routed out of state.

Colorado is in crisis.

So many streets are washed out, roads ruined.  A friend of mine lost her home and had to be evacuated by helicopter with the National Guard  (after 2 days with no phone, no electric) and where will she go now?  Rocky and Jovan will have a lot of re-building to do.  My niece and great nieces are in Estes Park, where there is only one way in or out for emergency use only.  We lost contact with them when the whole city was without landline or cell service for 2 days.  This is a crazy thing.

If it had been snow, it just would have been a slow-motion crisis.  One good thing, I guess.

See lots of heart-wrenching photos here, from The Denver Post.

LETS Pray for the law enforcement, city workers and the many emergency-responders who have been working around the clock to help so many people!