A tropical storm made landfall within the last day or so, bringing with it several feet of rain. I woke up this morning around noon, lounging about blissfully in bed for a couple of hours before getting up. When I eventually left my room, Rose was asking me if the area we're in tended to flood. She then told me to look out the window, which I did after going to the bathroom. When I did eventually look, the lake was overflowing and water was at our porch.
So, after drinking some apple juice to wake myself up, I put on my coat and went outside for a better look. It was raining heavily, so much so that the 5th lake, which is a good 25 feet deep and usually empty, was overflowing. The path to it was covered with fast running water and the maintenance guys of the complex were debating weather or not to evacuate the lower levels. While they were doing this, I walked higher up and checked the other lakes. They were also full, overflowing, in fact. The 3rd lake's drain was swallowing torrents of water, despite been covered with logs and tree limbs. However, it was still overflowing a little. The 2nd lake seemed to be doing fine, given that it was on much higher ground. Our lake, however, didn't do so well. All the pond weeds were pulled from the higher lakes and formed a foot thick slop that was blocking it. The rain wasn't helping things, either. I was out for ten minuets and three inches fell.
Thankfully, when I got back in, the heaviest of it stopped and the lakes slowly receded to a normal level over a period of about six hours. Well, normal-ish. Because of the weeds, our lake was still somewhat overfilled.
Later on today, when the stepdad came home from work, he took a look at the drain and started pulling the crap from it. After about five minuets of little progress, I decided to go down there and see what he was up to. Our conversation went like this:
Me: What the hell are you doing?
Stepdad: Drain's blocked, don't want it to flood.
Me: ... Ill give you a hand, you'll be here all night if you do it alone.
So I helped, clearing about 2/3rd of the area we worked on and freeing up a little more than half of the drain grate. It didn't take too long and we had to do it during another heavy downpour. Good thing we did it, too. If I hadn't have moved those tree branches and all that crap, the lake surely would have flooded again.
I was drenched when I got in. My left shoe was filled with water and I was quickly getting cold. I threw my pants and my dark shirts in the washer and took a shower. Was in there for a good twenty minuets getting clean and warming up. Was/is still a bitch getting all the dirt from under my nails, though. A small piece of dirt broke a nail on my right hand and is somewhat stuck under the split as I write it. I say somewhat because I've just managed to cut my nail deep enough to remove most of the dirt, which was somewhat painful to say the least. But at least we probably won't flood now.
It's a good thing that I'm somewhat well now, too. If I was as sick as I was on Sunday, I would still be in bed.
All these rain clouds are messing with my connection *Le sigh~* No good deed goes unpunished, eh~?
Yoji~
