Flood warning...

for those of you that have never lived in the midwest or have never been here during a thuderstorm warning.. it's crazy. They inturupt all of the "regularly scheduled" programing to alert you every two seconds that there is a thunderstorm warning. It's SO annoying!

On Thursday mom and I were starting to think about mobilizing the troops to get going to my OB appointment.. I had showered and dressed and was doing the last fueling session (nursing) before heading out the door when the skys opened up and it just started dumping. We were watching TV and there hadn't been ONE peep out of the stupid weather people. Not one bit of warning at all. So we thought it would most likely pass in about 20 or 30 mins - as it usually does. NOPE!!!! We got FIVE inches of rain in an hour!!! When I say we I mean just our immediate area. It was so strange.... we had a flood! First mom and dad started going around and closing storm windows... and sucking the water out of our window sills (between the window and the storm window)... I was buried in very fussy babies ... all I could do was sit there.

then they went to check on the basement to find a waterfall coming down the back stairs and water seeping through the walls... SHIT! The started sweeping water toward the big drain (not a sump pump) in our basement. Then went outside to see what the hell was going on.. water had pooled up right outside our basement door... up above my ankles I discovered later after I got out from under the babies.

Here are some pics I took... unbelievable.

Right outside our basement door:


The stream in our driveway:


Our neighbors yard:


My feet just off our drive way in our neighbors yard:


Our flooded garage:


A close up of our garage flooding:


We got lucky though.. only about a mile away (if that) cars were under water up to the roof and some apartment buildings were nearly floating away.. the cars under the buildings in the parking garages fully imersed and totalled!

The water was all gone by that evening, but damn! We've heard that this hasn't happened in nearly 20 years!

Again, thank god my "staff" was here or 1) our basement would have still been filled w/ crap and we would have had a lot of stinky wet cardboard and whatever was in the cardboard to haul out (instead of just an old smelly rug) and 2) I wouldn't have been able to get up and check on things so I wouldn't have known the basement was flooding and Tom would have had to deal w/ it when he got home and most likely into the weekend! THANK YOU MOM AND DAD!!!! To the rescue again!