flood stage
It's raining. It has been since yesterday morning, and though the rainfall hasn't been torrential at any time a great deal of water has fallen on us over the course of two days. I was gawking happily at flooded brooks and streets on our way to and from church, but I was less delighted when I headed down into the basement this afternoon to show off my seed-starting setup. Yes, I didn't even think to check specifically for water down there. Perhaps my subconscious brain wanted to protect me. Because, yes, we have water. Very much so.
In fact, it's far and away the worst basement flooding we've seen in our years in this house, including the couple times the downspout broke and poured water directly into the foundation, or when the hot water heater decided to dump all its water out onto the floor (which seems to have been unblogged). In both those cases, a whole lot of water came in at once, but then it stopped and we just had to deal with the aftermath. Today, it keeps coming in.
It might have been the conditioning from those prior experiences, but when I first saw water all over the floor I didn't panic. We'll just move a few things around; the floor's been wet before, there's nothing there that'll take any harm. After a while, though, I started to notice how the water bubbling up from the intersection between floor and wall was rippling as it flowed merrily down our uneven basement floor to join the rapidly spreading lake at the rate of, oh, I'd say about a half-gallon a minute. It was clear we would need to procure pumps. Oh, and they were sold out at the hardware store. Naturally.
Happily, Leah's dad was over when the disaster struck (or rather, was noticed) and he helped us borrow a pair of wonderful machines that are, even as I type, chugging away down there in the wet. Around 7:30 I turned them off because I needed to get some dinner I and was worried about them sucking dry, something that seemed imminent. How happy I was to have solved the problem! As you could have predicted, when I went back downstairs in an hour or so all the water was back. It's still raining, after all! So the pumps are back in action, and as long as they don't clog and we don't lose power (too terrible to contemplate!) they can keep ahead of the inflow. The only problem is, I need to stay up to monitor them. Work is going to be tough tomorrow!