I wonder if this is what Noah felt like...

I haven't slept well lately, for whatever reason.  So when my alarm went off at 6:30 this morning, I hit snooze and prayed I'd be ready to awaken 8 minutes later (it's a funny kind of snooze).  No such luck, and today I didn't feel like playing the 8 minute nap game, so I switched the alarm off all together.  Next thing I know, it's 8:15.  Luckily, my commute is a few seconds - it takes longer to make coffee than to make it to my office above the garage.  I threw on clothes, grabbed my ipad & iphone, and headed to brew said coffee.  While the sludge was dripping, I went through my morning routine, but decided to make an addition and looked out the window.  It had rained during the night, but I didn't really know how much had fallen.  (I would later find out that roughly 8.5 inches fell during the day.)  So I was quite surprised to find the front yard totally underwater.  We live "in the country", so drainage isn't the best, but it works well enough.  Apparently not well enough for the volume of water pouring out of the sky.  A flooded front yard wasn't a reason for panic or concern, so I continued about my business.  My next stop was a window looking out back.

Front Yard

Neighbor's Front Yard

When I looked out back, that's when the panic set in.  Our nice yard had turned into a pond.  Or lagoon.  Later, when I measured the fence, the water line was somewhere around 32 inches off the ground.  One day, I may do the math - length of yard x width of yard x slope of yard x 32 inches high = a lot of water.  I calmly walked back into the bedroom to wake up Leah.  Since water was lapping against the foundation at 2 corners of the house (outside the master bedroom & outside Cass' bedroom), I figured it was apropos to wake her up, get her started packing in case we needed to evacuate.  Also needed to get her thinking about what we'd want to move upstairs to prevent destruction by water.  Most people can't go from dead sleep to move around handling an emergency.  Leah may have been slow, but within minutes had bags packed.

I went about the business of finding a way to get water out of the yard.  After a few sips of coffee (and stacking Cass' bed/couch on her dresser), I ventured outside.  One side of our yard has a fence with a gate.  I figured it couldn't hurt to open the gate, see if I could get some water out.  Well.... long story short, it worked.  I'm not sure the pictures do it justice, but the water was not leaving the backyard through the fence with any amount of speed or haste.  Opening the gate changed that.

Having tackled the problem on one side of the yard, I decided to try my luck on the other.  The issue here would be that there's no gate that I can just swing open.  I don't have a gate, but I do have a sledge hammer.  So I made a hole.  I walked to that side of the house, got as low in the water as I safely could, and knocked a few boards out.  Water rushed out, so I kept going.  I think I knocked out almost half the pickets trying to make a drainage hole.  Paraphrasing my dad, $1.50 pickets are easy to replace, a flooded house less so.

Within a few minutes, the water level had dropped 3 inches off the fence.  It would take hours to fully drain.  Like, 9 hours later there was still water in the yard.  I know that because I went out to repair the damage I'd done (in my newly bought rain boots & rain coat, no less), and ended up removing 2 boards from each side of the fence to give a more permanent drainage hole for the duration of the storm system.  Last year was a drought, this year a flood.  I guess next year we can explain locusts or famine or something.  

Besides the sheer volume of water, there were a few things that surprised me.  The biggest was that, in looking around my house at what I was afraid to lose, there wasn't much I went grabbing.  I made sure the safe that holds our papers was moved upstairs.  And some of Cass' stuff was packed up.  But that was really it.  Stuff's replaceable.  A less moving thought was around work.  I emailed several people to inform them that I was dealing w/ a flood and to not expect me on any calls.  I got a response back from only 2 of the people.  One said build and "arc" (sic), the other said she wouldn't wait for me for any calls.  I think only 1 person came back to me (several hours later, when I actually made a call) to ask how everything was.  It's a bumming experience when your coworkers nor your boss are concerned that you're underwater... literally.