Apres le deluge

I apologize to my French readers for my inability to add diacritical marks to the title.   Please forgive me!

We awoke this morning to the sound of the weather radio “going off” to let us know that there was a severe thunderstorm watch.   By the time it was all over, we had indeed experienced torrential rains, straight line winds in excess of 60 mph, and several tornadoes had wended their way through the area.

Fortunately, we did not have the tornadoes here in our neighborhood, and all the roofs we are interested in still have all their shingles despite the gusts.    We did receive 3.9 inches of rain in less than an hour, however, which resulted in some rather astonishing quantities of water all trying to get downhill to the river at the same time.    

Storm drains were overwhelmed and backed up.   Small drainages were also full.    This photo following is the drainage stream for the small pond near our home.    Ordinarily, it has a trickle of water in the bottom of a five foot deep ditch.   At the height of the storm, the water was over the road for a time.   You can see the debris collected on the rails of the water crossing, although the water has dropped far enough it is no longer over the road here.

Same drainage, looking north rather than south.    You can see that there is more water than the storm drains can handle and the water is flowing across Beck Lane to reach the creek that drains to the river.

That’s a lot of water.   While the tornado sirens were going off, Jim went to the storm cellar and discovered that the drain that keeps it from being a swimming pool was overwhelmed.    During the height of the deluge, water rose in the shelter to about three inches deep.   Ruby could not understand why she was being forced to stand in the water.   Bad enough that those horrible sirens were going off incessantly, plus she was being locked up in the dungeon along with the terrifying cat, but standing in water?   The ways of humans are inconceivable and incomprehensible, to be sure.     

This is the view of that  drain as it struggled to deal with all the water that was being diverted from the root cellar plus the yard north of the house.

See where it bubbles up like a spring?   One last image.   This is what happens when the ground is saturated and a strong wind strikes.    Many of the street signs in our neighborhood look like this.

Well, it is good for our public works department to feel like they are useful.

Now, all the mulch that used to be under my hostas is now piled against the fence where the rushing river that flowed through my gardens carried it.   I believe I shall go out and see about moving that pile back to where it will do some good, assuming that we don’t get another toad strangler like we experienced this morning.

Looks like you got your wish, Silverstar.

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