Houghton floods

Darn it, people in the area I grew up in had some problems today. A little bit of water came down. There are around sixty washouts and sinkholes they have found so far up in Houghton County. Being that people are stuck up there now after the Bridgefest, they won't be able to leave by car from many places. Lots of people have been putting videos on Facebook, but the News can't get around very well so I guess they will have to access their facebook page to get their pictures. They call this place the Water Winter Wonderland. all those rivers running down the streets and no fish in them, kind of depressing if you ask me. Well, they have something to talk about for a while up there, the towns will be abuzz with people chatting about the mess.

www.uppermichiganssource.com...

WLUC TV6 has some pictures on facebook, and people are posting videos and pictures in the comment section of the articles. I wonder if we will make the National News, I doubt it, how are the reporters going to get there. Another big round of ugly clouds is forming, it may get worse.

Found another link. www.msn.com...

Depressing, new river and no fish in it.

Crazy.
Bad year for the bridge walk in general.
Iv never really seen that sort of flooding up north but I guess it makes sense with all the lakes and rivers.

Folks up there should be well equipped... good news for all the tubing / River float businesses.

Down here in Genessee Country I’d love some extra Rivers running through town because it’s hot as balls...



a reply to: rickymouse

a reply to: rickymouse

I'd still take it over this GR heat anyday!

ETA: Ripped these off FB:

Wow.

All jokes aside, that sucks.

I’ll take a hot paved road over that mess.

Good luck to y’all you northerners.


a reply to: JinMI

a reply to: JinMI

A guy named Phil Vasquez has a video on Facebook from over there. I am wondering, there is a car in the creek being smooshed by water, the road is gone, nobody would park there. I wonder if they got out of that car if it flew into the water and got washed down the hill? He does show the car in the water down there but blows it off as interesting, hopefully nobody is in there. I hope someone checked.

a reply to: rickymouse

Thanks for the thread. I looked at the radar this morning and it was all kinds of orange north of us. You guys got hammered up there. Take care.

a reply to: JinMI

This is from Houghton County today????

a reply to: DontTreadOnMe

Yes.

a reply to: JinMI

First I'm here about this. scary the power of water.
The Weather Channel is saying that storm system was responsible for up to a foot of rain, and IIRC they have been getting rain off and on for a few days now....so the ground may be saturated in some places.

I talked to my brother, he is stuck at his father in laws camp. The road is pretty washed out on the way to dollar bay from where the camp is. He said water is over the Dollar bay bridge, you can't see if it is there. A guy they know near the bridge had pigs, they all drown when their penned in area and barn went under water. From the normal water level at the bridge to the road surface is about seven feet, but that river drains a real big area so that seems about right. So there is between eight and nine feet more water in that spot. If the bridge is washed out he can take the backroads to get around the highway, it is washed out in three places. He can hopefully go up to the airport, but who knows if that road is washed out or not.

Even then, there supposedly is not a good road that can get him out of Houghton county, but there could be some back road somewhere that might be all right, just because the highways are messed up doesn't mean the side roads can't bypass the problem. I do not know how long it will be till they can get a Semi in with food and gas to the area. One washout may be able to fixed pretty quickly, the other two are pretty bad. It should only be a few days up there before they get one of the main roads open. I am getting info on facebook from old friends that are checking things out, I am not sure how isolated it is. It sounds like a sci-fi movie or conspiracy movie, all roads leading to the area are blocked.

I hope they did not drink all the beer over the long weekend. Some friends of ours are camping up there at a park with their camper, she was complaining, the road is washed out and she is out of wine.

EDit: There are side roads that a person can get in and out on. They are working on the highways quite a bit already from what I hear. The airport road my brother would have to take to get out is all messed up, maybe if he had his 4x4 truck he could get by it. He's kind of stuck at the camp for tonight anyway.

Hey. It made the national news. I'm impressed. It was only maybe a minute, but it was a minute.

The friends of ours that went camping got back. They had to go about thirty miles or more out of their way to get back, but they made it through. There is a pretty good road that was not effected but you got to go many miles in a different direction to hit the road that comes back.

a reply to: rickymouse

Good news about your friend.

Is the bridge that connects Houghton and Hancock still working, or is it damaged/flooded?

a reply to: rickymouse

MSM: "In other news we've been informed that Michigan has an upper peninsula. It was formed today by mudslides from what we know to be Michigan and parts of Canada."

originally posted by: JinMI
a reply to: rickymouse

MSM: "In other news we've been informed that Michigan has an upper peninsula. It was formed today by mudslides from what we know to be Michigan and parts of Canada."

Or more accurately, as once said from one of my friends back in Florida:

"Upper Peninsula? Isn't that just Canada?"

a reply to: JinMI

In all seriousness, the pics are really surprising to see, I didn't expect something like this up there. Houghton is one of the 3 areas in MI my husband eyeballed for work prior to coming up here (Houghton, Escanaba and GR) I know it snows like no tomorrow up around Houghton, and gets damn cold, but this much rain? Never would have thought it.

That bridge is fine, it is the areas where lots of streams and rivers cross the road that got damaged. Also, rivers of water flowed down the hills and somehow destroyed lots of roads.

So we just got a huge thunderstorm here, pouring rain. I hired some roofers to reroof my house, they got it all tore off and covered it with Wintergaurd ice and water shield, it sticks to the plywood. Well, it rained on friday after ten, they had got some of the roofing on. It would not have been a problem if we had not got high winds on Saturday, it did something to the wintergaurd in some places and it leaked in a couple of areas. It sucked, My daughter and her boyfriend went into the front attic, it was all wet on top the osb flooring and was leaking through to part of the ceiling in the livingroom and spare bedroom on the first floor. We had lots of junk in there, old stuff from years back. Projectors and a super eight camera and all sorts of stuff stored there. There are a lot of buckets there now. We mopped up for hours and it was getting dark so the contractor could not come out and tarp that area. Oh well, now there is some drywalling to do, also some osb needs to be pulled up so the area can dry out in the attic. Take lots of precautions and extra expense and still the weather shows you that it is in charge. It could have been worse, the wind would have torn off all of the felt if it was felted.

a reply to: Nyiah

I remember watching waterfalls and rivers in the street when I was younger, that was normal in a hard storm. Once in a while a small culvert would get washed out or maybe even a bigger one on a backroad. This is different, it is widespread. This is rare up there. There were storms with four or five inches, but nothing like that happened.

a reply to: rickymouse

I'm so sorry to hear that, what rotten timing!
I hope everything can dry out and get repaired ASAP.


Those poor people!
The damage to the roads, sewers, homes and businesses are going to take some time and lots of money to get back to normal.

Hasn't the UP had more than their share of rain in the last few days/weeks??

originally posted by: DontTreadOnMe
a reply to: rickymouse

I'm so sorry to hear that, what rotten timing!
I hope everything can dry out and get repaired ASAP.

 

Those poor people!
The damage to the roads, sewers, homes and businesses are going to take some time and lots of money to get back to normal.

Hasn't the UP had more than their share of rain in the last few days/weeks??

We actually had a burn ban here for about a week. It was nice to see a little rain on Friday. But Saturday night/sunday morning in the copper country was not nice and this evening we had a major thunderstorm here, That is normal once in a while though, just not when I didn't have the shingles on the roof. I can't blame the guys working, things happen like that. I talked to the contractor, he said he will take care of fixing the damage, it will take a guy about a half day to patch the drywall and a day to sand and prime the spots and paint the two ceilings.

I guess we should expect some flooding down stream on the Muskegon River, considering Houghton Lake is the river's source. We just got the Hardy Dam pond up to level after some work they did on the dam recently. Shold be here in 5 4 3 2 1 !