Water Water Everywhere

As I've said before, one of the disadvantages to living next to a river (besides motivational speakers living in vans and people shooting their babies) is the possibility of flooding. The Great Flood of '14 has made us a tad skittish when heavy rains fall.

The weather lately has been heavy on the rain. And I do mean heavy. Like torrential downpour heavy.

On Monday morning, there was an amazing heavy rainstorm in this area - so heavy that you couldn't see across the street from my building! The road flooded, and the field across the street turned into a lake. Streams and creeks turned into raging rivers, causing massive damage. Even the food court in the King of Prussia mall was flooded!

Flooded street and field, as seen from my office building

All of the runoff from those streams and creeks goes straight into the Schuylkill River, which can only take so much before it gives up and goes haywire. To assess the possibility of flooding, we generally keep our eyes on the peace sign that adorns the remnants of an old dam; when the water gets halfway up, I start to get concerned. This time, the peace sign had disappeared altogether. Luckily, the township police were on the ball and notified our apartment management that the risk of flooding was high. They blocked off the road that runs down by the riverside and cordoned off the riverside parking lot.

On Monday, the apartment folks warned us three times. Each email was more dire than the last. When I got home from work, I found a parking space at the highest point of the complex, right by the Schuylkill River Trail, so I didn't have to walk very far to get home. Joe was wavering - his car was still parked in our building's garage - and thinking about taking a chance that "wolf" was being cried. About eight o'clock Monday night, I convinced him to at least see whether the water was coming over the banks.

Well, it was. The entire parking lot was underwater. The garage was still dry, so Joe jumped in his car and moved it to the far parking lot at the entrance to the community. It's about a half mile away and set way back from the river. Fortunately, it had pretty much stopped raining by then, so he was able to get back home by walking down the trail. In his jammies, I might add. The lot was almost full - people actually took this warning seriously, especially after the events of the morning.

Later that evening, the apartment folks secured all of the elevators at the top floors of the buildings to prevent any damage from flooding.

Thankfully, the water stopped rising before flooding the garages, the lights and gas stayed on, and lobbies stayed nice and dry. Whew!

Really high river!

I gave Joe a ride to his car Tuesday morning, and he headed off to his first day at his new job as a sales associate at Duluth Trading Company. (Surprise! Yes!)