Record-Breaking Rain and More on the Way...

I've got two swimming pool areas in my backyard that aren't supposed to be there, because I don't have any inground pools!  That means we got at least 6 to 7 inches of rain yesterday.  It started raining by about 7:30 a.m. and except for brief respites between storm fronts, it hasn't stopped.  The heaviest rain started falling during rush hour, stranding people for hours as freeway underpasses flooded out; more roads got taken out as rivers and streams burst their banks.  Some parts of the city (downtown and to the north of where I am) got 7 inches of rain IN AN HOUR.  Here's a sinkhole that opened up during the storm at the intersection of North Oakland Avenue and East North Avenue on Milwaukee's site.  That's a Cadillac Escalade that became it's unfortunate victim and yeah, that's a gushing water main adding insult to injury.  Photo from JS Online, by Mark Pawlik. 

Last night it was dashes into and out of the basement as the tornado sirens went off twice.  Lightning started fires all over the city; two people were struck by lightning while out walking.  Lightning terrifies me, and I was huddled wrapped in a blanket in a corner of the house as far away from windows as I could get, listening to the storm coverage on the television.  Fortunately I did not lose my electric power, so the sump pump did its job.  I don't have a FLOODED basement, but I do have standing water from seepage through the walls and around the floor.  What a mess.  I cleared out as much of the stuff stored in the basement as I could last night, in between tornado warnings, but no way could I get it all out by myself. 

(Photo from JS Online, Adam Schroepfer, Otto's parking lot flooded, east side of Milwaukee).  Waves of heavy, pounding rain and non-stop strobe-like lightning continued on and off all night and early morning.  It's still raining out there, but not heavy right now, and the lightning flashes have subsided for the moment.  I'm debating whether to try and make it to the office.  The bus I take downtown (which itself sits in a river basin) has to travel through low areas and there is no way of knowing right now if the route has been flooded closed (no way around the low areas of the city).  I can't call anyone at the bus company to find out because the last round of county budget cuts fired all live operators who used to take calls from the public.  Now one is supposed to "check online" - but the website sucks and is rarely updated.  Gee thanks, County Executive Scott Walker.  Wish you'd get stuck in a sinkhole!

Great, just great - I just heard on the radio that most of the power outages in the area (last night it was some 25,000 people, this morning it's about 8,000) was caused by lightning strikes, not downed power lines due to wind.  In fact, except for the odd tornado here and there, there has been no wind. 

Today the dew points will be in the 70's and the temperature a high of 88 F.  Plus the contant rain.  That desert down in Las Vegas is looking more and more tempting all the time...

Stormy Weather!

Eek! I've never been so scared in my life! Tornado warning was sounded before 4 p.m. today and then the damn sirens went off! I'd been out cutting the grass in the mondo overgrown backyard and ran out of gas after an hour - not even half done yet! I was waiting for the lawn mower to cool down before putting in more gasoline when all hell broke loose weather wise! So, I put the lawn mower in the garage and run inside and put on the radio, and they're telling me to GET DOWN INTO THE BASEMENT THIS INSTANT, YOU STUPID WOMAN! So, I go down into the basement - after I sweep the stairs (don't want to be sitting in ick). Stay there all of 2 minutes, maybe less. Curiosity killed the cat - now I understand that saying completely! I won't go into all of the gory details of the past 2.5 hours. I ran around and around and around the kitchen and dinette cleaning up stacks of papers and putting away the knife block and utensils attached to the wall on racks (LOL!), piles of research, checkbooks - and I stuffed my high blood pressure medication into a plastic bag and tied it to a loop in my jeans! Suffice to say I tried to take photos of the flooding in the road out front and in my back yard - thank Goddess my house is built on a small rise! Unfortunately, they didn't turn out - I'm just not skilled enough with this camera. I tried to take them through the screens and pouring rain and all I ended up with was a big blur! We got about 4 inches of rain - it slacked off for all of 5 minutes, now it's deluge time again and I expect a flooded basement soon, because the sump pump, the super-duper model I had my brother-in-law Fred install in 1993 after I got flooded-out the first time, won't be able to keep up. We had this kind of weather system at the end of June/beginning of July, 1996 and I had a flooded basement again. Power never went out mind you, the pump just couldn't keep up with the thousands of gallons of water gushing into the pit. We are now in something call "back storms?" Well, something like that - although the "super-cell" that spawned the earlier tornadoes has now blown out over Lake Michigan toward the east, the weather system has redeveloped to the west and is blowing this way. More lightning, more thunder, "white" rain - it's raining so hard I can't see anything outside except white. I hope the water level doesn't rise another five feet, I'll be flooded on my first floor if it does. The basement - probably a lost cause...