Where's Noah When You Need Him?

Well, it's been a wet and wild couple of weeks. I would have to check the statistics (but I'm lazy that way, so I won't) but I think this is the wettest August ever for our area. We had so much rain and had been under flood watch and warning so long it was becoming a way of life. For the first time in three or four years, water came in our garage. Our new neighbors across the street were quite shocked to see that much water. Apparently no one mentioned it to them. Our neighbors to the north were quite surprised as well. In fact when I went outside to take pictures, Mr. Neighbor was outside on his front porch looking at his new lakefront property. He asked me what was going on and I told him it used to do this all of the time, but since we had two years in a row of actual drought conditions, the ground absorbs most of what rain we get. Not this time - we're saturated. 

The front (looking west)

Looking southwest

These pictures to the immediate right are all of the front yard on just one day. This day, the water didn't get into the garage but came up to within two feet of the door. The two times it came into the garage, it happened overnight so there aren't any pictures. We prepared for it the best we could by getting things up off of the floor and moving important things towards the back of the garage, but you can only do so much. My neighbors to the north, us, and my neighbors to the south all have it the worst. We are all at the lowest point on the street, with our house the lowest, plus there is a run-off channel between our house and my southern neighbor. All of the rain from the western neighborhoods which are on a slope feeds down to us and is directed through that short channel. The problem is that the channel feeds into an old small sewer pipe which can't handle all of that water, so it backs up. And then you get idiots who try to drive through it and cause ginormous waves to crash up onto your front porch. All of the mulch we spread a few weeks ago is washed away, as well as a good bit of our gravel drive in the back of the house under the carport.

Looking due south

If we have a lake out front, then we have a river out back that feeds into another lake. At times the water was rushing so fast between my southern neighbor's house and my house that you could almost grab a kayak and do some paddling. My dogs sure didn't like going out to do their business in all of that, but unfortunately they haven't learned how to use the indoor facilities.

Looking north

The river out back looking to the south

So all of this water has played havoc on electronic equipment. Phones, cable, and internet have been going out sporadically all over town. We've also lost power a few times all over the city at random. Our internet was out at our house at various times last week and over at my dad's house it was out for like four days. But, I feel blessed because we are okay, and others have not come through this weather okay. Some folks out in the county got hit with a small tornado - a 2.5 on the Fujita scale is what I read in the paper. Apparently it picked up a house and rotated it on its foundation by about six feet. And then there are those who live near the river and have had it come into their houses, and the farmers who have lost crops to the flooding. It's not been very fun this summer.

The river feeding into...

And talk about hot! It has been so hot and humid that even if it wasn't raining, you wouldn't know it for all the moisture in the air. And throughout all of this, pieces of my house were still coming off and floating around. Thankfully, though, the tear-off process has finally started as of yesterday - YAY! So now I get to look at the nasty 70's Goldenrod color on my house. Yeehaw! About half of it is off and what's underneath is in pretty good shape. We just have to pull nails and patch holes and pick out paint. Of course agreeing on the color is an issue, but hopefully since the whole Greenbay Packer fanclub thing we had going on last year in the kitchen, we've learned a few things and can avoid any potential paint disasters.

...the lake out back

I am thankful that our roofers did a good job because with all of this rain, a lot of people who just got new roofs on their houses are finding that they now have leaks. I can only imagine how peeved I would be if that happened at our house. In fact, I'm pretty sure "peeved" wouldn't quite cover it. Not even a little bit.