Detroit freeways shut down as rain storm floods city + suburbs

[Zeffy]

Saw this article on Weather.com (I know right? Something interesting to read on that site...), and it looks like most of the Detroit freeways suffered heavy flooding to completely shut Interstates 94, 75, and 696 as well as the M-10 (Lodge) and M-39 (Southfield) freeways.

Anyone in the Detroit area have any experiences to share from this? The flooding looked pretty ridiculous from the images posted on Weather.com.

[catch22]

We live in northwest Wayne County, so we're high enough to have avoided all but some minor street flooding.  The local news was showing pics of I-75 under I-696 with water almost up to the clearance sign on the overpass.  Right near the pump house, a lot of water had spilled off the service drive and washed away a lot of the embankment.  If that knocked out power or silted up the pumps, that would explain the bad flooding.

MDOT pic:
https://www.facebook.com/MichiganDOT/photos/pcb.10152557886629927/10152557885174927/?type=1&theater

Detroit News pics:
http://apps.detroitnews.com/apps/multimedia/gallery.php?id=18440

The southern part of Oakland county (Royal Oak, Clawson, Huntington Woods, Hazel Park, Madison Heights and Warren) is filled-in swampland with most of the streams and creeks capped and covered. Low-lying and flat. No place for this much water (over 4 inches in a few hours) to quickly drain off.

[Zeffy]

Thanks for those links! One photo showed the water almost touching a 14 feet clearance sign on an overpass. I've never seen flooding to that degree before, at least not in the Michigan area.

[thenetwork]

For about 75% of those vehicles, I don't feel sorry for them.  They probably either see a semi or SUV cutting through the water like they do in a Ford Tough commercial on TV and say, "Duh...Gee, I can do that too" and then they get stuck, or they think it's "only" a couple of inches of water and throw common sense out the window.

I really only feel sorry for the other 25% who were trapped due to stopped traffic or seeing the flooding well ahead of them used common sense and stopped, only to have the water levels reach and overtake their formerly "dry land" area.