Water, water, everywhere

[altivo]

It's been a roller coaster day. Drove to work in the aftermath of one severe storm, listened to watches and warnings all day (and had a low door count, which no one minded particularly.)

Then I met Gary as agreed in Woodstock for dinner. He had a music event to attend this evening, and I would go home after dinner to take care of animals. We met right on time, as often happens, pulling into the restaurant lot one right behind the other even though we come from opposite directions. It was just starting to rain.

We were seated, ordered, and the lights started flickering just as the soup arrived. They seemed to come back on after a few blinks, but the rain really started pelting down outside. The rest of dinner arrived, and we had just started to eat when the lights went out completely. Fortunately for us, we were seated by a window and had enough dusky light that it wasn't a serious problem as staff scrambled to find improvised lighting. They brought dinner rolls with birthday candles in them to many tables, much to our amusement. Apparently the kitchen is largely electric, as they stopped taking food orders and turned people away. We were able to finish our meal and even get coffee cups refilled. No cash register, of course, and waitresses were sharing a single battery operated calculator to add up checks. The hostess remarked that cell phones have calculators in them as a rule and someone answered that they had no idea how to use that.

We finished, paid, and left, only to find that the end of the lot where we had parked was filled with rising water. We waded through six to eight inches to get our cars out just in time. I figured I'd take the highest ground of three likely routes home, and started that way (it also is the way with no traffic lights, since traffic lights were all out.) No such luck. The road was completely blocked by a couple of large trees lying across it. So I turned south to the next most likely choice, though I knew there would be one signal probably out and a low spot in the road that is prone to flood. The signal wasn't dark, but was flashing red in all four directions. Traffic was heavy, but I got through. Then came the low spot, and sure enough, there was water rising but it was only three inches deep where it flowed across the road, and two feet wide at that moment, so I got through. I watched a truck with a horse trailer cross ahead of me, so I knew precisely how deep it was. Over the next hill and I could see flashing lights in the distance. A woman coming the other way stopped and lowered her window to speak to the guy with the horses. Then she stopped for me too. She said there were live power lines down on the road and we should turn around. That meant crossing the running water again. It was getting deeper, but still only about three feet wide and maybe six inches deep.

Back to Dean St. and south farther, to the state highway that should go through. That was a success, though it was raining hard again by now and the road was very slippery. Of course I had tailgaters who just couldn't stand to slow down. Two of them passed me even though I was traveling at 50 mph, which was probably too fast for the conditions, and sprayed me with muddy water of course as they raced their engines and took off at 70 mph. (The legal speed there is 55, but a lot of them travel at more than 65 as a matter of course.) I would have loved to see one off the road in a muddy ditch, but of course wasn't that lucky.

Got home without further mishap, to find the driveway full of water, but only a couple of inches. No large branches or trees down unless they are back in the woodlot or pasture. I didn't go that far back, but I did go to both barns to close remaining open doors and some windows, leaving the bare minimum for ventilation just in case another sideways rain squall hit.

A second squall line was predicted, but it missed us. Only the flash flood warning remains. Sump pump under the house is down to one cycle every 30 seconds, from every 15 seconds when I first arrived home. Tomorrow, thanks be to Poseidon, is supposed to be dry.

[Edit, Saturday 10 am] Freight train derails, fire, explosions, and evacuation follow. That's the worst consequence of the storm I've seen reported so far. That location is about 25 miles west of here.

Comments

[corelog.livejournal.com]

Sheesh! Well, I'm glad the farm is still generally okay. I have no desire to see you get flooded anywhere indoors, either in the house or in the barn.

[shep-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Doesn't sound like it was much fun :/

[equusmaximus.livejournal.com]

If this keeps up you're going to need to build an Ark! :) We've had a little bit of sprinkling up here, but we really need a week or so of gentle rain to really get the crops going properly. Naturally, the grass is nearly waist-high where I can't get a swather and baler in to harvest it, and the hayfields are parched with grass barely 8" high. :P

[rustitobuck.livejournal.com]

Glad you guys and the critters and your home are all ok. There were lots of damage reports out of McHenry, and I was thinking of you.

Me, I only lost Comcast for hours, and the internet on my BlackBerry went down too and I thought I was going to die of bandwidth deprivation. I was starting to get desperate enough to exercise or clean house when it came back.

[doco.livejournal.com]

I guess an elevation map of your area or something similar would help. They're saying the only natural disaster that could happen here is flooding, but even after a week or so of rain after snow, the worst thing I've seen is a few roads closed off due to rising water in the nearby river, but nothing like that flash flood you describe. :P

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yes and no. It tends to get more complex than just the contour maps, but of course that's a major factor. We locals are aware of the regular places that the surface water flows, of course, like the one I mentioned.

This is also a forest and savanna area, with many large old trees that drop branches or even dip over completely in wind, rain, and ice storms. Those are harder to predict and can take out power lines, close roads, or even clog rivers causing them to back up and flood in novel ways.

Our land is actually on a hillside, so it would seem unlikely to have serious flooding at first glance. What happens though is that the natural drainage operates at a fixed rate, which is normally good. When there's too much water all at once, it backs up in places. This reduces erosion but increases flooding.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Woodstock seems to be particularly hard hit by these events as a regular thing. I'm not sure just why, but they lose more big trees than we do whenever there's a storm of this proportion. You'd think they'd be barren of oaks and maples by now, but actually I rarely notice the empty spots once the debris is cleared away. We were at the intersection of IL-47 and Lake St. with a window view of the roads and sky. It was a lot of rain, but didn't seem that windy and didn't last all that long. From within the restaurant, the primary notable event was the power failure. There wasnt' even a lot of lightning or thunder.

The sky did look ominously weird in Harvard about 45 minutes earlier. We all remarked on it as we left work. The library being on top of a hill and in the open, we get a good view of cloud formations and movement.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

There are enough trees down in the area to provide lumber for an ark, though most of them are burr oak in rather poor condition.

I don't mind rain, but I'd much prefer to get it gradually instead of in these sudden gully washers. Our cheap rain gauge shows 1.5 inches which is heavy for a one day period, but we've had worse: as much as 3 to 4 inches in 24 hours. Then we get periods of 120 days or more without a drop of rain. Those kind of droughts seem to be increasingly frequent, and they weaken the big trees so that they die and fall over a couple of years later when a storm comes through.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Not exactly fun, but I've grown sufficiently accustomed to these challenges that it didn't raise much adrenalin. The scary part was actually the flooding parking lot. That was unexpected and rising fast. Had we left 15 minutes later, we might have had serious problems with the vehicles. The devious route home was just a bit of adventure, since I've lived here long enough to know most of the road options and their various foibles.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

The house and the big barn seem to be just high enough to avoid that. The little barn where the boys and my bunny rabbit live is unfortunately right in the path of one of the surface flows we get in heavy rain. The water wants to go in one side and out the other, which is a damned nuisance. I need to go out now and check, but the only dampness in there last night was from rain coming in open windows.