Water, Water, Everywhere!

Last weekend was the Yellow Rose Fiber Fiesta in Seguin, TX.  We had a blast!  The weather was great, the drive out there was totally uneventful and we saw many old friends.  They shut the show down a bit early on Saturday afternoon because storms were rolling in.  In the end we didn't have any rain while we were packing and loading although other parts of Seguin did.  We stayed over Saturday night and came home on Sunday morning.  We had a little bit of mist and light rain on the drive home but made it in good time.  The rest of Sunday was delightful.  Then came Sunday night into Monday.

I don't know how much rain we had between Sunday night and Monday afternoon.  Our rain gauges were brim full early Monday plus we got another couple of inches later in the day.  I can definitely assert 7" of rain but it could have been much more than that.  The area around Peggy's house got something near 18" and some parts of my county got as much as 20".  That's just a huge amount of water.  Rivers and creeks are still rising in several areas of Houston even now.

Schools and businesses were closed all over the greater Houston area on Monday and again today.  There were boat rescues all over town and everyone was encouraged to stay inside if possible.  Shelters opened up all around town for those who had to evacuate their homes.

Our power went off sometime during Sunday night and didn't come on again until almost 4 pm on Monday.  I was surprised to discover that our phones worked even without power.  Today we have had power but the phones aren't working and we only managed to get internet access this afternoon.  If this had happened during the summer heat we would have been miserable without air conditioning but our cool spring weather meant we stayed pretty comfortable.  We sat out on the porch or near a window to read or knit and kept up with current events and checked on family and friends on our iPads.

Other than getting very wet, our only damage from this storm was to our driveway.  We live on a curve in the road so all the water coming down our road is channeled into our culvert.  Most times that isn't a problem.  This time it was.  We have a large washout that has stolen nearly half the width of our driveway adjacent to the street.  The high water mark is nearly a foot above the highest point of our driveway.  Ron put up flags so an unsuspecting visitor won't drive into the hole and we have notified the county.

You can see all the material that used to be our driveway has been moved to the other side of the culvert and now forms an island in our ditch.  It's very cool from the water movement/soil transport perspective but I'd really rather have all the cobbles, pebbles, gravel and sand back where it's supposed to be.

I'm exhausted.