Flooding 101

Now, being from OK I've never really had to deal with flooding. Of course there were the spring floods that would swell the streams, creeks, lakes, etc. around us, but not really ever a big deal. There were also the rainy seasons in Mexico that left the streets flooded, but once again, not really serious.

Today driving home I got my first real flooding experience. It was just barely raining as I left work and picked up the baby girl. As we drove up the mountain it was obvious rain had been coming down a while. On many of the streets there were rivers of water. Then once I hit the continental divide all bets were off. They are doing a lot of construction (taking out part of a mountain to make a 4 lane highway kind of construction) demolishing old rock, taking out a lot of trees, etc in that area. So the run off was drastic. I should have known something was going on when I was concerned about being in the lane because the gutter on the side of the road was spilling a ton of water into the road. There had been a few spots with trees or debris in the road, but nothing major really. Then the 10 miles between the divide and home were harrowing. Several trees had been downed and pulled a fair amount of dirt with them outside of Tweetsie. So much dirt in fact that the state troopers were being reinforced with plows. Then I got the the intersection of Wal-Mart and there were starting to be single lines of traffic since the street was flooded. Then I tried to go around and they had orange cones in a parking lot because the lot had flooded up to people's side windows, for those poor souls who couldn't move their cars. At this point the major intersection in town that I was trying to get through closed down. I ended up taking refuge at a grocery store until the rain stopped enough for my wipers to keep up. The fact that the store is on the side of the mountain, if not the top was also part of my plan because there was no way I would be stuck in water in that parking lot. Chris got home and discovered our basement to be flooding. Thankfully my cello was still dry, as were a lot of other things. However, now we get to rearrange our basement. Thankfully a couple of weeks ago we moved everything off of our hearth because the damper is leaking. So, the dehumidifier in our basement will be on until Easter, but we are faring well.

Of all the snow, ice and crap I've ever driven in, torrential, flooding rain is the only thing that really makes me nervous. When I finally got home I felt like I'd gone for a distance fun unprepared. I took swimming stuff to work with me in hopes of getting a lunch, who knew I'd need it to get home.