A creek overflowed into Thomas Park in Marion, Iowa, on Sunday, September 20, 2026, after storms dumped roughly 4.5 inches of rain in two days, and the same water shut down a nearby farm’s pumpkin season on its opening weekend
Marion, Iowa, woke up Sunday to a park that had turned into a lake. Storms dropped about 4.5 inches of rain over the weekend.
Indian Creek couldn’t hold it, according to KCRG-TV9. The creek jumped its banks and poured into Thomas Park.
Water covered the trail, the basketball courts and the green space on First Avenue. City crews closed Prairie Hill Park and Boyson Park too, after nearby creeks rose there as well.
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The park looked like a swimming pool
“It looks like a ginormous swimming pool,” reporter Lacey Reeves said on the air. She was describing water that had swallowed most of Thomas Park by Sunday afternoon.
The footage shows submerged trees standing in brown water. Some are underwater almost to their lower branches, with a wooden park kiosk barely visible above the surface.
Marion resident Lynn Glass walked down to see it herself. She said it was worse than she’d expected, with “half of the park” sitting underwater.
The park’s sand pit had almost completely disappeared, Glass said, buried under the flood along with the trail she normally walks.
A family farm lost its opening weekend
A few miles down U.S. Highway 30, Bass Family Farms had its own flood. The farm depends on weekend visitors once its fall activities open.
This past Sunday morning, it had standing water where its games should’ve been. “We woke up and saw basically an extra pond out in our game and activity area,” said Brenna Bass, who runs the farm with her family.
The farm had to close its activity space for the weekend. Bass said the closure is costly, right as the fall season was getting started.
Why the mud will stick around
Standing water is one problem. What it leaves behind is another, and it doesn’t drain overnight.
Bass said the ground will likely stay muddy for days. Floodwater soaks fairground grass and dirt paths far deeper than a normal rain does.
She’s banking on the weather to help now. “Hopefully some sunshine in the near future,” she said, would dry the grounds out faster than wind alone.
Until then, the farm is watching its fall season slip by one muddy day at a time.
Cedar Rapids and Marion brought in pumps
The flooding wasn’t limited to parks and farmland. Cedar Rapids and Marion both moved fast on Sunday.
Crews deployed portable pumps at low spots around both cities, trying to push storm runoff away from homes and streets before it backed up.
Cedar Rapids officials said they’d gotten reports of flooded basements. They described that water as rainwater and groundwater, not sewage backing up through the pipes.
Marion set pumps at five intersections around town, working to keep the same thing from happening on its side of the city line.
Streets across Linn County took on water
City crews closed a stretch of J Street SW too, between Prairie Creek and U.S. Highway 30, after the creek rose over the roadway.
Trails shut down for the same reason. The CeMar Trail, Boyson Trail and Indian Creek Trail all closed as the water kept climbing through the afternoon.
Officials in both cities had one message: don’t drive or walk through standing or running water, and don’t go around barricades placed at flooded roads.
Those closures were still up as the rain finally moved out Sunday night, leaving cleanup for the days ahead.
No structural damage, but real money lost
Neither Thomas Park nor Bass Family Farms saw structural damage from the flood. Nothing collapsed, and nothing washed away for good.
The story here is time and money. A fall business season got interrupted before it fully started, and a neighborhood park will need days, not hours, to drain.
For a farm that counts on weekend crowds every October, even a few lost days can add up fast, Bass said.
What comes next for the farm and the park
Bass Family Farms is watching the forecast now, not a repair crew. A few dry, windy days should firm the ground back up for weekend visitors.
Bass gave no exact date for reopening the activity area, saying only that sunshine would speed things along.
Marion hasn’t said when Thomas Park, Prairie Hill Park or Boyson Park will reopen either. Indian Creek still needs time to recede, and the buried sand pit is proof of how high the water climbed.
City crews are expected to inspect all three parks once the floodwater is fully gone.
