It was a gorgeous day today in Downtown Cleveland. It was in the upper 80s, the sky was clear and the humidity was high, yet bearable. And then 3:00 came. Out of nowhere it started to rain. And rain. And rain. And rain.

After nearly an hour and a half of rain, hail, lightening and high winds, Downtown Cleveland was under water. According to the news, 6.5″ of rain fell on downtown during that short period of time.

I love thunderstorms and at first the storm was very fun to watch. Then the storm drains in the parking lot of my office building started backing up and were shooting small geysers into the air. The water starting coming in underneath the door in our break room and around the window sills. We tried to plug the holes and mop up the water, but it was just to much. In under 10 minutes the water had spread across the entire room.

Then came the overhead announcement: “Everyone needs to move their cars out of the parking garage because it’s starting to flood.” I headed down to our basement parking garage and found that it already had several inches of water in it. I splashed through the water, got in my car and moved it to the outside lot. By the time I got back into the building the water in the garage had risen to nearly a foot and the exit ramp had turned into a small river, making it impassable.

With no sign of the freak storm ending and my day already over I decided to hunker down for a bit and wait it out. Once the rain finally stopped our garage had over two feet of water in it in some places. The parking lot was flooded and impassable and there was a partially submerged minivan in the intersection in front of our building.

After waiting another thirty minutes the water in the outside parking lot started to drain off and people began heading home. Several of the female employees in my department were still parked in the basement garage. Since I was already soaking wet from my earlier adventures I volunteered to head down there and drive each of their cars out.

Once I finally got out of the office the next step was getting out of downtown. Several streets around my office were blocked by water, many of the traffic lights were out and no one was going anywhere. After spending almost an hour making what is usually a five minute drive, I finally got onto I-77 and headed home.

As soon as I got just south of downtown the sun came out and the road was dry. Not a single drop of rain had fallen. Typical Cleveland weather.

From Channel 3:
Photos of the flooding
Video of the flooding
Updates on the affected area