My parents, Sydney’s grandparents on the Wright side of the family, drove over 1,300 miles in their RV to see their new granddaughter. Unfortunately, the weather gods were against us.

Mom and Dad arrived in Colorado on Wednesday, September 11th, in the exact middle of what would turn out to be an historic five-day soaking that created 100-year floods. Boulder received 17 inches of rain in five days as compared to our normal yearly average of 21 inches and broke the daily, monthly, and yearly rain records.

Unfortunately, Mom and Dad stopped 33 miles away in Loveland at an RV park on Wednesday rather than continuing in to Boulder County, since the plan was to meet up on Thursday to watch my Over-40 league soccer game and they didn’t want to arrive early. Little did we all know things were just getting worse.

Thursday was the peak deluge and the county suffered. Little Boulder Creek was running at over 5000 cubic feet per second compared to a normal of around 100 cfs. Mountain towns like Jamestown were washing away. Streets in Boulder were flooded and cars were left abandoned. On Thursday at midnight warning sirens went off downtown and we were put on alert for evacuation as a wall of water was predicted to be heading down Boulder Canyon. Sydney slept through the whole thing.

It was, truly, a chaotic weather event and my parents ended up grounded for three days.

Well, as “grounded” as grandparents wanting to see their granddaughter would be. On Thursday they stayed put. On Friday, as the police recommended everyone avoid driving, they drove from Loveland into flooded Longmont to check out the roads and a closer RV park. On Saturday they repeated the trip, this time with their RV and car-in-tow. “It’s no problem”, they explained. “We know which roads are blocked and how to get around them.” On Saturday afternoon, they finally arrived in Boulder for their long-delayed three-day trip. It is nice to have (two sets of) committed grandparents!