Saturday, April 18, 2009

April Showers (or Floods) bring May Flowers!



Being a Houstonian, you learn to deal with the rain, otherwise there's seldom a month you would go outside. This weekend was no exception. Friday we had already had intense storms dumping 1-2 inches of rain and some gusting winds. Saturday was forecasted for the same, with a chance of tornadoes or hail. They even canceled the MS 150 (a bike ride from Houston to Austin to raise money for MS disease) which had approximately 13,000 bikers signed up.

Saturday morning I awoke to clouds and light drizzle...it was actually quite nice sleeping weather. Kris was out of town (man did he pick the right weekend to be gone) so I thought I'd spring clean and run some errands. Little did I know the weather had other plans.

Everything I needed was in about a 3 mile radius of the house, which was nice because it didn't require me to go very far (or fill up my 3/4 empty gas tank). It started raining just as I left the house and continued to get more intense as I drove. I finally had made it to I-10 and the Beltway in about 20 minutes (normally a 5 minute drive) and thought "I better go back before the streets flood"...little did I know that it was too late.



By the time I turned around and came home the access road to Beltway 8 was already impassible. Luckily I was in an SUV so I was fairly confident that if the cars could make it through I would be alright. It took me about 30 minutes to drive the 3 miles back home, by the time I got there I noticed the streets in the neighborhood were flooding badly! Some cars were already immersed in water! I slowly made it back to our street and noticed it was completely flooded, there was no way I could get down it. So I decided to pull up on a neighbors driveway, leave the car and walk the rest of the way home. Thank goodness for my trusty rain boots from Target that kept my feet nice and warm on my walk home.



Our truck (the Duck) was still in the street, so that would need to be moved right away. As soon as I got in I had Morgan (the intern living with us this spring) help me move the truck.



I then saw my neighbor outside raking the drains to ensure no leaves were blocking them. So I decided to get the rake and help him. Come to find out, there were no leaves blocking the drains, there was just nowhere for the rain to go. This was getting intense, what if it came in the house?





Luckily after about an hour the rain let up, and the street slowly started to go back down.

2 comments:

Camille, Blake, Pierce and baby Asher said...

Wow... you always have pics of the weather and your house on your blog... I bet you are tired of wondering if your house is going to be OK... that is awesome you guys have a intern what a blessing... and helping your neighbors... you are my hero... good job... I do need to see pics of you and Chris though... miss you guys.

Renee Westcott said...

Great pictures! I'm glad I missed the storm. Our flight left just a bit before the front moved through. Brent was flying from College Station and his flight was canceled. Weren't you scared driving through the water even in an SUV?