Please forgive me spring. I complained because I thought you abandoned us too early. I need to be careful what I say, because spring came back, with a vengeance. It was hot, and then it was not. It was dry, with the air filling up with pollen, and then it was severe weather, with serious warnings of tornados and large hail. Somehow, we always seem to miss the worst of it. I think it's because we live in a low spot of our neighborhood. But we always heed the warnings. For the first time ever, my husband decided to tape cardboard to our car windows, to protect our windshields. Also, for the first time, our neighborhood was mentioned by name, by Ryan Hall, Y'all. If you haven't experienced this self-made and amazingly awesome meteorologist, you need to look him up on YouTube. He honestly saves lives, by providing a live feed during dangerous weather outbreaks. He mentions towns, cities, cross-roads, telling you if you are near these landmarks, you need to get to your "safe place." So yeah, this time, as we were hunkering down, he said, "Mt. Airy, you're in the path." I felt kind of like Mike Wizowski, because we were suddenly a little bit famous, but it wasn't a good thing. We could have been unrecognizable, just like Mike
Luckily, the storms passed over us, dropping some rain, but really not that much. They moved to the north-east, looking for flat farmland (as tornados often do) and they touched down in Morrow and Lebanon, very near our local NOAA Center. A few days later, the temps started going down, and we had some extended colder temps and then the craziest rainfall we've ever seen on our street. Standing water in the road, while rivers of water gushed from both directions into the storm sewer.
There was a day, not so very long ago, when this would have been a terrible thing for us, except that we were one of the first properties on our street to prove that our prevailing basement floods, with toilet waterfalls, was not our fault (thanks to my husband's research and all the pictures he took of the floods, and the surcharged sewer line in front of our house.) Heavy rain often comes at night, so we would be in the basement, at first shop-vacking squeegeeing, and dumping the shopvac outside. It went on for so long, that hubby actually put a "dam" around our floor drain, with a pipe running out through our walk-out garage. But we still had to sweep, out there with our next door neighbors doing the same thing, guiding the and sewage outside. It was very stressful, especially for my husband. He had a mild case of PTSD from those 3 years of hell. Finally, the sewer dept put in a new "cleanout," closer to our house. Prior to that, they had checked a cleanout further up the road, and the float was never up, making them claim it was't their problem. The next time we flooded, I told my husband to mention a new cleanout, which I had witnessed being installed. Hubby went out, told the workers, and turned around giving me a high-five, as I watched from the house. We were ecstatic with this first proof that the problem wasn't with our property or plumbing. We still had to jump through some hoops, though. We had to hire someone to come in to clean and take a video or our line feeding into the sewer line. After that we were signed up for preventative measures. Some kind of flood blocking device that does it's job! Now when it rains, we just pray that the electricity doesn't go out, while I go searching for tiny aliens. (And I will never complain again about a lack of spring weather!)
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