A Bit of a Flood (aka Spring)

Sorry for the late post this morning. I've been dealing with a bit of a flood. Living halfway up a mountain doesn't keep me safe from such things--especially as I live next to a ski resort that has, oops, had, 4 feet of snow on the slopes.

The ground was already saturated and muddy from the natural snow's melting before the rain started. Then last night I got something over an inch of rain. Add that to the snow on the mountain, and the result is a once a year (hopefully no more) prescription for a flooded basement.

The rain stopped about 2 hours ago, but it's still coming in the basement. The ground water comes in through the casing of the well line. I currently have 2 sump pumps running, and the basement is down to about an inch deep--from 3-4-5 inches--but until the water stops running off the mountain, the water will likely continue to come into the basement. Hopefully, that won't last much longer. I have one battery powered pump and one electric pump. I learned my lesson years ago when I had both a flooded basement and a power outage. After that, I bought a battery-powered pump to add to my collection.

My first photo today is not a stream. It's an ordinary hill at the ski resort with a lot of water running down it. The ski slopes themselves are not as bad as I feared, but now instead of having 3-4 feet of snow, we have 1-3 feet of snow. That's a lot of water.

The second photo is a normally tiny seasonal stream that's at least 4-5 times its normal size. My lane is washed out this morning, too. It's the kind of thing that makes me glad of having 4-wheel drive. One thing I won't have to worry about is that once my flooded basement is done flooding, I won't have a river or a stream rise to worry about, and many people around here will have that concern well into Friday.