Deluge!

It started raining around 10:00 last night.  They forecasted us for perhaps 1/2 of rain so I wasn't overly concerned about flooding problems due to the deep snow from last week's 2 storms and went to bed.

I was woken up at 2:00 a.m. with lots of thunder and lightning.  I listened for an hour then decided to check the radar to see when it was going to quiet down.  What I found was a massive front with lots of embedded thunderstorms.

It sure won't be quieting down anytime soon and now I'm back to worrying about flooding.  Guess falling back asleep now is going to be a little problematic....

7:30 a.m. update:

The storms continued until nearly 6:30 and finally tapered off.  The heavy stuff is past us although we are now in a tornado watch.  There is 2" in the rain gauge. 

Around 5:15 I heard a sound I couldn't identify and it didn't last long.  It happened again a few minutes later and then I realized I was hearing the sump pump!  Now you might think this shouldn't be so surprising, but it is. Y'see, I had a full basement interior gutter system and sump installed back in 2004 after a storm that dumped 5" of rain in less than an hour.  The basement was awash; every crack in the basement floor shot geysers of spray from underground water pressure.  After that huge expenditure, it's never rained hard enough or long enough for it to come on. :-/

But now with the ground frozen and the 10" of snow remaining on the lawns, roof runoff obviously worked down the foundation and filled the sump.  Good to know it works. It came on maybe 8 times and is quiet now.  Another thing that makes it noteworthy is that you have to remember - I'm on TOP OF A HILL so I can only imagine what my neighbors downhill from me and going through this morning.

Glenda asked about my flood concerns.  But it's not for MY property.  My lot was properly graded way back when and most of the water off my lawns run into a swale between my house and the neighbor to the south.  A lot of the private road and other lawns feed that swale which in turn runs downhill across a couple of backyard and joins up the stream at the bottom of the hill.  This morning the snow and ice has blocked the culvert under the golfcourse (it's too narrow) and now several backyards are flooded there.

Here you can see the path of the swale coming from between the 2 houses then running down and across the backyards down and the flooded stream.  (Sorry for the blurry pic).

After 3 months of hard-core winter and other aberrant weather, I'm about worn out.  It took me 3 days to dig out the driveway and deck from Friday's blizzard.  But there is still lots of (now saturated) snow on the ground.  Can I relax now?  Nope! In fact, we're just now coming into our HEAVIEST SNOWFALLS which traditionally come in March and early April.  Oh joy.  :-/

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