Thursday, April 21, 2011

Where Have All the Dry Days Gone?

 Mr. Tumus and his flowers

I miss the sun.  My cats miss the sun, my lawn is growing like a crazed monster and because of the inclement weather pattern the rain barrel we've purchased is still sitting by the wayside not collecting an ounce of this valuable runoff.  Hopefully we can manage something on Sunday.  This week alone we've had approx. 3 inches of rain in my area with another 1-2inches expected tonight and tomorrow. I even shuddered at the 7 day forecast which, you guessed it, called for scattered thunderstorms up till next Thursday.

I don't mind all the rain, but it's been excessive this Spring.  Our Winter was already incredibly wet to begin with and the water tables are very full.  With the ground saturated we've actually had to deal with flash flooding around our area.  The Great Miami River flooded incredibly bad once in 1913 and all of downtown Dayton went underwater.  Because of that there are now 5 huge flood gates and dams build along it's path and tributaries to prevent flooding downstream.  Here's a brief wiki about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Dayton_Flood  but even the dams are getting a historic workout with this constant deluge.

Still we live far enough away and our city is on a natural ridge above the valley that the only flooding we have to contend with is that of our basement and overworked sump pump :(   You could instead say a prayer for Texas who needs the rain more than us.

2 comments:

Lisa at lil fish studios said...

I hear ya with the water condition. We have 4 sump pumps going to keep the water out of our basement. Our water table is naturally high here anyway but add to it a long-lasting winter with all its snow and rain, and you've got us scrambling. We've even re-landscaped the yard to help with the run-off but we may have to backfill even more, covering up our basement level windows. Not ideal, but I guess you do what you have to, huh?

Let's hope it gives us both a break soon.

Tumus said...

4 sump pumps?! Wow, I think we may have to do a French Drain around our basement just so we can refinish it and keep the water out.

We too have re-landscaped and regraded parts of our yard to help with it. The best thing we've done is put in a flowerbed/retaining wall around the perimeter and it's done wonders.

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