And the rains came...
Aug. 7th, 2007 08:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
altivoWhen I left work yesterday it was raining lightly. The forecast called for thunderstorms, but nothing happened until after we went to bed. Then the pyrotechnics began. By 2 am, it was raining hard and steady, and the thunder and lightning display was almost continuous. The power cut off just after 2:30.
Gary went with a big battery lantern and tried to look out into the area between house and barns. He was convinced that the water was rising, had already swallowed the bottom fence rail of the dog exercise yard, and must be two or three inches deep in the boys' barn. I looked but wasn't convinced. The steady, hard rain continued, and the lights didn't come back on. About 3:50 we went back to bed, both to have weird dreams while the lightning continued to flicker outside the windows. I got up at 6 am when there was a little light, but the cloud cover was so heavy you still couldn't see well.
However, water was nowhere near up to the boys' barn. The dog yard was full of water all right, but not to the bottom fence rail (that would have been over a foot.) The creek was over its banks and the duck enclosure had an inch of water in it.
When we went out to feed, we found that the arena, where the sheep spend the night and Tess has her stall, was dry as ever. The boys' barn had some water in both stalls so that the bedding was soggy, but no sign that it had actually flooded. Rain came down so fast that I think it poured in through the top of the Dutch doors.
The rain gauge showed a little over five inches of rain overnight (about 12.5 cm.)
We have no basement in our house, only a four foot crawl space with gravel on the floor. Flooding down there is bad because it will breed mosquitos and over a long period of time, promote mildew and mold. Also, the well pressure tank sits down there and the regulation mechanism could be damaged by water and mud. There's a sump pump to prevent that. It didn't occur to me that I wasn't hearing the pump run periodically, but after I made my way to work over half flooded roads, Gary let me know that the sump pump was not operating and there was six inches of water in the crawl space. He was working on it.
He also hauled the emergency generator out of the garage and wheeled it around to the far end of the house, where we have a hookup for it. Got it running so the refrigerator, freezer, and well pump could run. By then the power had been out for eight hours and the temperature was climbing. Of course, as always happens, shortly after he finally got the generator out, the power came back on. In the end, I left work early to come home and help with the sump pump, which turned out to be clogged with floating debris rather than actually dead. It's running every 80 seconds as I type this.
Good thing that. More thunderstorms are expected tonight. The water is receding, but another inch or two of rain will pump the levels right back up where there were this morning.
Gary went with a big battery lantern and tried to look out into the area between house and barns. He was convinced that the water was rising, had already swallowed the bottom fence rail of the dog exercise yard, and must be two or three inches deep in the boys' barn. I looked but wasn't convinced. The steady, hard rain continued, and the lights didn't come back on. About 3:50 we went back to bed, both to have weird dreams while the lightning continued to flicker outside the windows. I got up at 6 am when there was a little light, but the cloud cover was so heavy you still couldn't see well.
However, water was nowhere near up to the boys' barn. The dog yard was full of water all right, but not to the bottom fence rail (that would have been over a foot.) The creek was over its banks and the duck enclosure had an inch of water in it.
When we went out to feed, we found that the arena, where the sheep spend the night and Tess has her stall, was dry as ever. The boys' barn had some water in both stalls so that the bedding was soggy, but no sign that it had actually flooded. Rain came down so fast that I think it poured in through the top of the Dutch doors.
The rain gauge showed a little over five inches of rain overnight (about 12.5 cm.)
We have no basement in our house, only a four foot crawl space with gravel on the floor. Flooding down there is bad because it will breed mosquitos and over a long period of time, promote mildew and mold. Also, the well pressure tank sits down there and the regulation mechanism could be damaged by water and mud. There's a sump pump to prevent that. It didn't occur to me that I wasn't hearing the pump run periodically, but after I made my way to work over half flooded roads, Gary let me know that the sump pump was not operating and there was six inches of water in the crawl space. He was working on it.
He also hauled the emergency generator out of the garage and wheeled it around to the far end of the house, where we have a hookup for it. Got it running so the refrigerator, freezer, and well pump could run. By then the power had been out for eight hours and the temperature was climbing. Of course, as always happens, shortly after he finally got the generator out, the power came back on. In the end, I left work early to come home and help with the sump pump, which turned out to be clogged with floating debris rather than actually dead. It's running every 80 seconds as I type this.
Good thing that. More thunderstorms are expected tonight. The water is receding, but another inch or two of rain will pump the levels right back up where there were this morning.
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no subject
Date: 2007-08-08 02:37 pm (UTC)The US is supposedly the "Land of the Free" but to me it has always looked like the land of absurdly enforced conformity.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-08 10:32 pm (UTC)