Friday, August 19, 2016

Lake Nutwood

I could write an entry about Trump whitesplaining to African-Americans in front of a white audience in Michigan, but I find that I’m just feeling too mellow to get riled up about him today. It’s just so absurd and laughable that I can’t quite find the words. Maybe tomorrow.

So instead I’ll leave politics behind and write about Lake Nutwood!

On Monday, it started raining. It rained and rained. And rained. I think it rained for about 18 hours straight, and some of it was definitely a downpour.

South Bend ended up getting a record rainfall for the day, around 8 inches at the official location at the airport. Our place, however, was in the “hot spot” for rainfall and we got around 11 inches. We went from the driest August on record up to that point to the wettest August on record, in less than one day.

Crazy!

When I got up Tuesday morning, I looked out back and couldn’t believe my eyes. Half of our backyard was underwater! We’ve been here almost 15 years and we have never seen so much water in our yard. I joked to Ken that I always thought a lake house would be nice but I’d rather WE went to the lake instead of the other way around!

I find myself looking at it constantly. It is just odd to look out there and see all that water. It’s kind of pretty...I like seeing the reflection of the trees on its still surface. It has held fairly steady since Monday but I’m finally starting to see that it is receding back to the pond. The ground is obviously saturated and we may not see it recede completely for a few weeks.

I’m including a video that I took Tuesday morning and as I say in the video, we were very fortunate. We had no water in our basement (it’s a walk-out basement) and no damage. A lot of people weren’t so lucky and ended up with a lot of damage. A couple of families lost their homes. Our flood wasn’t nearly as bad as what is happening in Louisiana, of course. My heart goes out to everyone affected by this in South Bend, as well as in Louisiana, and we are proud to be long-time supporters of the American Red Cross.

I’m certain that what saved us was Kengineer. Shortly after we moved here, we noticed standing water in the yard after a heavy rain. If I recall correctly, the previous owners had mentioned a couple of times when they got water in the basement. So Ken rented a Grasshopper and dug a couple of trenches in the yard and installed PVC pipe, then put in drains up by the house to carry any water out to the small back pond. We never saw standing water like that again, at least not by the house. Everything flowed back to the pond and the wetlands and when the pond overflowed this week, the water stayed away from the house.

Well done, Kengineer!

2 comments:

  1. Actually, Lake Nutwood & a handy, appreciated husband is just as interesting-& sometimes more so-than Trump's every escapade. Enjoy your vacation. Maybe even try some more M Train.

    ReplyDelete

I'm funny how, I mean funny like I'm a clown, I amuse you?