That's a lot of water.

I read a single sentence in the middle of an AP "Midwest floods" story yesterday about the Cedar River at Cedar Falls, Iowa, and I shrugged...I lived there for three springs and the area on the bottom left of this picture, as well as the left between the cloverleaf and the river, was covered in water for at least two of them.

But it seems much worse this year. The bridge never collapsed before...

(Also, there are no falls in the Cedar River near Cedar Falls. No one told me this until after I'd spent most of a summer hiking up and down the paved trail along the river looking for them.)

Cute town--good local arts scene, good locally-owned restaurants, three quilt shops, beautiful library, airport ten minutes from my apartment, could do my grocery shopping within walking distance, miles and miles of woods to walk through without a long drive--if I hadn't been the only unmarried childless woman over 23 in the entire county, I might have stayed. (Advice to funny-looking 28-year-old women with intimidating job titles: don't move to a small town in the middle of nowhere if it has a state college with 75% female undergraduates, or you will never go on a date with a man younger than 70 without driving two hours to get there...)

Actually, Cedar Falls would be a good place to retire.

The AP is also throwing around 1993 references:

Rising waters also threatened Palo to the south. City officials there urged residents to evacuate, predicting flood levels as much as 2 feet higher than 1993 levels, which left much of the state under water.

There's a nuclear power plant (build more!) in Palo. I'm sure they've planned for this. I'm surprised the AP didn't pick up on that, to spread more enviro-FUD.