Dodging A Bullet

With river level predictions at 21 feet for the next 24 hours on the Cedar River in downtown Cedar Rapids on Saturday, June 1, 2013 from heavy and persistent rainfall, worries were for more of the same chaos and destruction created by the recent flood of 2008. As it turned out, the river rose to a level only slightly higher than shown in the images above, which at the moment of capture was around 18 feet. Both photos look southeast from the First Avenue bridge. The top image pictures the Second Avenue bridge in the background with the Alliant Tower at left. A right foreground is a section of the river wall around Veterans Memorial Building on May's Island. The bottom image shows a closeup of a painted river level marker below Vets Memorial Building. The peak level of 18.23 feet the next day would rank fourth all time in the history of Cedar Rapids.