We have lived through a tornado. Now, we had the chance to live through a Flash Flood Warning.

Comlara Park had a major dry spell, and everyone in the area was stating “We really need rain.” We had 2 days of steady rain, and the flash flood warnings started to come out. Fortunately, there were no issues at the campground. We had power most of the time. The worst of the storms were about 10 miles south of us. Bloomington / Normal had straight line winds, thunderstorm, and lots of rain. Approximately 39 % of the households were without power.

Since our area of the park was not impacted, we went to park spillway. I was amazing by the amount of water running through the spillway. The small slow river that used to be after the spillway became a fast flowing river.

This is what the spillway looked like on August 8, 2026

This was the spillway on August 15th, 2026

If you look at the fence at the bottom of the spillway on the pictures to the right above, the is six of eight feet tall with the water halfway up the fence. There is a three to four foot difference in water level between the pictures.

The pictures below are the spillway area. From what we could tell, the spillway gate was at the same height as August 8th pictures, but water is flowing over the top. In the campground, the ramps onto the floating docks were under water.

Something we did not expect was the large number of maggots climbing on the framework of the bridge. We think they came from the dead fish that were in the spillway. Once the rain hit, the maggots started climbing the framework to save themselves.

And the best picture for last…