It was an early morning for me as I got up to head in on my second weekend of Weathermanning.  I had made my debut back on August 7, my first ever weathercast, so I was definitely still very green.  This weekend promised to have more action to talk about, so the warm-up weekend prior was nice.  With storms filling in and flooding already reported in the area, our usual morning Met came in and relieved me so I could get out and start Weather Warrioring.

I pretty much headed straight up to Tamaroa where the heaviest rain had set up.  I crawled my way up US-51 through Du Quoin, my usual flooding city, and managed to sneak up into town prior to US-51 getting shut down.  Waters rose quickly in town, first taking over a Casey’s gas station on the south side.  While I was up there, unbeknownst to me, US-51 to my south was being flooded out and was now impassable.

I attempted to get back south, but saw the situation unfolding on US-51.  Flooding from town blocked me from going north while now I was stopped from getting south on US-51.  I had a find a high point in a yard to park and wait out the rising water that had now basically cut off the south side of town in all directions.

The waters north of Tamaroa finally receded enough to where I was able to get myself off the island and back home safe and into a badly needed shower.  By the time I wrapped up all my work, it was nearly 7pm, almost 17 hours since I awakened for Weathermanning.  I was exhausted, but it was an easy sleep after I finally wound down enough to close my eyes, all to get back up again the following day for more wet weathermanning!

This was an incredible experience, and I met a bunch of very cool folks in and around Tamaroa during my several hours there. We pushed a couple cars out of the waters, they gave me a bag of cookies, and everyone was just super friendly given the circumstances. The several officers from the Sheriff’s department were terrific, held the scene, and were also very friendly. The event as a whole was just amazing, and happy to report other than a couple vehicles that flooded out, no injuries or serious damage (that I know of). And three goats and a dog were also saved.