It was supposed to rain yesterday, and boy did it! Strong storms were forecast in the evening and we had some heavy rain with thunder and lightning, but nothing crazy. Then, from about 11pm – 2am a train of storms passed over us with thunder, lightning, and heavy rains solid for 3 hours. We received about 4 inches of rain, and to the west it was more like 7 inches. All of that rain had to make its way down the creek behind our house.
I woke up at 2 because of the storms, and Rose, and a few minutes later I received an alert from the city that they were closing some streets due to flooding, including our street about a block away from our house. I was out of bed from 2:30 to 3:30, checking on our back yard and the street. I decided to pull our lawnmower from the shed in case the water rose that high. When I went to bed at 3:30 the water was about up to our back gate and a city worker had told me that the water in the street was not rising anymore. That helped calm my nerves.
The kids were up before us in the morning, and I could hear some commotion so I decided to get out of bed. This is what I saw –
The water was 2/3 of the way up our back yard and just a few feet from the deck. I marked the edge and determined pretty quickly that the waters were receding, which was nice.
After the flood we had some fence repairs (which still need to be done) and all of the things in our back yard got floated to the back corner. We also had to replace a lot of mulch, and one bag or charcoal. Susan had made fun of me at the time, but I am glad I moved the mower from the shed, which had about 1.5 feet of water over the floor.
It sounds like this flood was a new record for the Walnut Creek, and I hope we don’t see those levels again anytime soon.
