This was the view out the window on the way to school to get the kids Friday afternoon. Oh, and by the way, the tornado sirens were going off!!! While part of me was freaking out, the other part of me was thrilled. I am a weather fanatic, and I know many of you know my obsession with the weather and local TV weather personalities growing up. Well, the weather still fascinates me. Way back when I was a Junior in high school, I had looked into universities in Oklahoma and Kansas to study meteorology just to be in the heart of tornado alley and be able to be a storm chaser. Then I picked up a book on Cloud Physics...yikes. Needless to say, I am not a meteorologist.
The weather began beautifully Saturday morning; we had a birthday party to take Cal to, and a 5th birthday party for our cousin that Kaycey, Maddie, and I went to. It was hot, and very muggy. Then out of nowhere, it began raining. No big deal, it lasted 10 minutes. The sun came out again. Then it began to cloud up again, and I heard a neighbor's radio talking about tornadoes near West Bend, which is where Cal was for a birthday party. Huh, weird--we all thought. I called the mother right away and everything was okay right where they were. I stepped in the house to check the weather on TV, and WOW--there were tornado warnings everywhere, and minutes later, the sirens sounded for the second day in a row. It was amazing. WHile some of us made our way to the basement, some stayed on the main floor to watch the TV weather. This is the back yard at my aunt and uncle's house shortly after it began raining.
Their yard doesn't typically have standing water after a rain. My Dad called to tell me his street and the intersecting street 3 houses down was completely under water and over the curbs. He & Maria live just houses away from a creek. The next street down was under 2 ft of water. There was word on the radio that cars were floating down streets a bit northeast of us. Also we are on edge at my Dad's because his pump (he now has 2 or 3 going) can barely keep up in the basement, so we moved alot of our stuff up we are storing here to higher groud or upstairs (like all my scrapbooking stuff!!) Another Aunt and Uncle of mine had major problems with sewage coming up through their basement drain and they had to carry hundreds of buckets of water out of the basement. And then on top of all that, I had to pick Cal up 1/2 way to West Bend. The rain was still coming down, and there were so many streets and highways closed because they were under water. My Mom drove with me to get Cal and this was the view driving on I-45:
Seriously, there were a couple officers standing near the shoulder of the highway and it was up to their waist. I wish I would've thought to take video of it with my camera. My camera didn't take great pictures because it wasn't on the right setting, but just to get an idea...
Word is since yesterday there's been between 5 and 10 inches of rain. As I type, it's raining pretty hard still. And it's supposed to keep raining for at least a few hours. And possible heavy rain tomorrow as well. So there is a bit of water in the basement (at Dad's), we are just hoping for no power outages or more extremely heavy rain. Out at the new house, it sounds like some neighbor's driveways are under water, and culverts damaged. Our houseseems to be in good shape and our drainage system seems to be working out well, well it better be after they made us build so high up (which is a good thing I suppose)!! The sky earlier right after dinner while another big storm moved in.
By the way, alot of the baseboard and casement around doors and windows is done inside the house, except for where the cabinets will go (Mike and his Dad were out there yesterday, Mike was out there today). I saw my cabinet door and drawer (Mike's Dad brought a sample), and they look awesome, except the color didn't seem to go with the floors, so he's going to try a different color.
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