Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Texas Flooding At Its Worst

After years of horrible drought, we are once again getting rain. Lots of rain. Like at least 12 inches of rain in a few hours at my house the night before last...

I was up all night listening the the pounding rain, powerful winds, and hail. I also was keeping an eye out for leaks, with this kind of heavy rain it wouldn't be shocking to discover new ones. At one point I looked out the window and saw that our yard was flooded, both front and back, about 10-15 feet from our foundation. Thank goodness our house is pier-and-beam and built on the high part of the subdivision.


The next morning the waters started receding and left our yard soggy and covered in debris.  We walked the neighborhood to check out the damage.


Our friends a few doors down lost a giant oak tree that was uprooted  due to the soggy ground and strong winds. The kids spent hours playing on it. They always make the best of a weather disaster.


The end of the neighborhood borders a creek that is infamous for flooding. After reading horror stories about all of the nasty chemicals/germs/floating debris/fire-ants/snakes/dead animals/etc. floating in the flood waters I told the kids to stay in the shallow water. 


But boys are boys and they started getting more "brave" (foolhardy).


And of course flooded their boots as soon as humanly possible. 


We did find many islands of floating fire-ants. Piper the dog swam through one and I spent quite a bit of time picking biting ants off him.

That flooded area behind the kids is an empty lot that is about to have a new house built on it.


This section of the neighborhood has large lots (2-3 acres) and some of the biggest/nicest houses. But it is in the flood zone and several of the houses were islands, surrounded by rushing creek water (full of the icky dangerous stuff mentioned earlier). All of these houses are built up high so the living areas were dry, but I can't imagine waking up to this.


The boys continued to push their boundaries and see how wet they could get before mom would start screaming at them to come in and shower off.


But there are always kids more idiotic than your own.  If you look closely you can see an orange blow-up boat out in the water Some of the older neighborhood boys went "white-water rafting" down the swollen, fast-moving creek (full of disgusting sewage/chemicals, floating debris such as trees and swing sets, snakes, etc). These boys wore no life-vests, of course. They said their parents said it was OK, but I had to wonder if that was true. I told my kids no way in Hades were they ever doing that under my watch.

And to bring my point home, my mom and dad, who also live off a creek and had an island-house, texted me last night and said that a 20-year old in their neighborhood tried to walk through the flooded waters to get out of the subdivision and was washed downstream. He was able to cling to a tree and had to be rescued after dark by a rescue boat. I am sure he was covered in fire-ant and snake bites and dangerous cancer-causing chemicals. At least that is what I am going to tell my boys. ;-)

Did I mention this 20-year old was a male?

Yep.

And we have more rain headed our way this week. Ugh.

Hope everyone is high and dry and safe today! Our power is not flickering any more so I should have have a new freebie coming out tomorrow.

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3 comments:

  1. Omg. Rita! I've been watching your flooding on the news and came here to see if you posted anything! You always write in a fun and interesting way. Glad your house is dry...but that sounded scary! I hope this upcoming storm is not so bad. Keep us posted!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Jill! They are still predicting more rain this week but so far it has been clear. The waters are receding slowly.

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  2. Goodness. The expression, 'if it doesn't rain it pours' really comes to mind in your case. Glad you guys are all right and your house has stayed dry. Good luck weathering out the rain still headed your way.

    Lisa D.

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Rita