Wife and I were taking the 60 (to the 10 to the 17 to the 101 to go to Glendale/Peoria) tonight. We were one of the last vehicles allowed to go past the Mill Ave off-ramp before the cops showed up and blocked the freeway. We thought there must have been a huge wreck or something so we waited with all the other vehicles for awhile. All the lanes of traffic were stopped and we rarely saw any cars on the Eastbound side either.
After some time we got closer to the source of the problem - the freeway just past the Mill Ave on-ramp and on toward the Priest off-ramp was a raging river. It was a crazy amount of water and it had taken over all the lanes on both sides. The only traffic getting through was squeezing by in the fast lane of either side and crawling at a snail's pace.
We got out of there because it seemed like the fast lane might take forever. We left the freeway as directed by police - leaving the freeway by way of the Mill Ave on-ramp. Cops were directing traffic and had to deal with exiting traffic from the on-ramp and off-ramp at Mill (on the North side) and the off-ramp on the other side.
Once we got into the streets there were more issues because they were overflowing with rain water. From one side of each street to the other the water was above the curbs and flowing pretty good. We ended up going North to Broadway and turning left. Broadway was flooded really badly and all of the cars had to hug the middle of the road...sharing the center lane. Made me glad to be a truck owner. We just drove cautiously but at a good pace in the gutter lane and were past Priest in no time. We grabbed the 10 from there and had no more problems.
There was a lot of water on the freeways too and we did see 3 single vehicle accidents from people losing control of their vehicles.
We ended up taking the Squaw Peak to the 101 instead. I was surprised there was no flooding on the 51 because that has been known to not drain properly in the past.
Nice to get such a downpour. Hope no one got seriously hurt out there.
same over here
