Flash Flood Waters Wreak Havoc Overnight in East Dubuque, Ill.

FIRST PERSON | Wednesday night we sat down to watch the movie Carpool and have supper in our home on Illinois state Highway 35 in East Dubuque. About halfway through the movie we were greeted by surprise claps of thunder and flashes of lighting. We had an 80 percent chance of rain on the Doppler radar, but there were no distinctive storm cells nearby. I rechecked the Doppler to see a circular blob of rain.

Over the next hour, the circle metamorphosed into the first of a series of severe thunderstorm cells that caused massive flash flooding down Highway 35 (Wisconsin Avenue through East Dubuque).

The most direct impact for us was the loss of my 1995 Mercury Cougar, which is, ironically given our movie choice the night before, now a car, at best, submerged in a pull of water in a drainage ditch in downtown East Dubuque. We considered moving our car a couple of times in the evening because our street had already taken and shed mass quantities of water twice, but the radar didn't tell the tale of what was to come in the third deluge.

The map looked clear, and it was; the storm that claimed our car seemed to have developed somewhere between Waterloo and Manchester, Iowa. By the time its full fury was evident, there was no safely transporting our vehicle to higher ground in the rushing waters.

In the end, we consider the loss of our car for the past six years, my first and only car, to be a nearly imperceptible hurt given the potential devastation we could hear about in the coming days. Given the bluffs dotting Dubuque and East Dubuque and the torrential rainfall that dropped over 10-inches of rain on the Wisconsin, Illinois and Iowa tri-state area within a 24-hour period (closer to 12 hours at our home), mudslides and weakened foundations may be an issue for many hillside homeowners over the next several days.

The powerful direct lighting strikes that plagued the area in the night have already claimed at least a portion of a downtown brick building in Dubuque, Iowa, reports the Telegraph Herald. The East Dubuque flats area had to evacuate because of the rainfall, and beautiful, historic downtown Galena looked like a swimming pool early Thursday.

The full extent of the damage in the tri-state is only now beginning to be realized as clean up efforts begin. Highway 35 through East Dubuque is not covered in water anymore but it was covered in debris during the early morning hours. A hole resembling a puzzle piece exists in the road on Wisconsin Avenue and multiple pieces of pavement were littering the intersection of Highway 35 and Sinsinawa at the Highway 20 cloverleaf leading up to the Julien Dubuque bridge connecting Illinois and Iowa. As of 9:30 a.m., most of the large pieces had already been loaded into a dump truck for removal.

Right now, I am in sit-and-wait mode, as are many other residents. Our home is fine, but our car is completely destroyed, wedged on top of three other vehicles underneath a small bridge across Menominee Road in East Dubuque. We count ourselves blessed that there was no one in the vehicle as it floated away and no one in the direct path of the car as it met its demise. We hope that everyone was equally fortunate.