a day at the beach...sort of

Well, we started off yesterday going to the beach. It was raining here, but that doesn't always mean anything. The weather at the beach was wonderful. There was cloud cover, so the sun wasn't too intense and the waves were about 4-6 feet. Watching the waves was really cool. Bethany and I were just basking in the sun.



Well, after about an hour, it started to sprinkle so we thought we might as well pack up and go home. As we were getting off of the highway we looked up toward Manoa and we couldn't see anything. The rain was coming down so hard. As we were coming inside the apartment, Nevi, our neighbor upstairs, said we should go check out the stream. Mom, you remember what the stream looked like. It was kind of like a nice little brook where there were ducks swimming around. Well, we went over there, and it was like a raging river rapid!!! It was about 2 feet below the bridge, when it's usually about 15 feet below. Nathan checked the weather and it said it would stop raining Sunday morning. So we went on about our evening. About 7:30, as I started to feed Bethany, our doorbell rang. Nevi again. He said that we might want to think about moving our car to a higher point in the parking lot, as cars were floating down the street and water was building up in the lot. WHAT?!?!?!?! Well, I was feeding Bethany so Nathan went out. The water was about ankle deep on our side of the lot, but about knee deep just on the other side (there are only two rows of cars so the lot is only about 40 feet wide). The apartments on the other side of the lot already had water up to their doors. The "stream" was breaking around the bridge and was pouring water everywhere. The transformer outside our building was almost completely submerged.

Well, after it was all over we all went outside to look at the damage. The water was starting to recede, but the stream was still up to the bottom of the bridge. There were 3 cars stuck to a tree IN THE MIDDLE OF THE RIVER!!!!!! Other cars had been picked up by the water and landed against trees, light poles, etc. It was CRAZY!! People who have lived here for a long time said this has never happened before. Lucky us, right? So, Nathan went back out this morning and those three cars, not in the middle of the river. They were to the side, but last night, they were in a river! We're going to post some pictures soon.

Here's a link to the news story.

More later!