On my way back home from Holy Moly today, I had my camera with me and stopped to take pictures of the nearby park, which was reclaimed from a wetland area when the subdivision was built 20 years or so ago. Whenever we get a lot of rain, it clearly shows “once a wetland, always a wetland,” because a pond or small lake will appear overnight in the area, and take weeks to drain. The nickname for our area, according to David, was “Hoffman’s Mistake” when he was in high school, and so I dub the body of water in the images below Lake Hoffman’s Mistake.

There’s a play area in the corner of the park that gets swamped, too. It did the same thing several years ago, just a week or two after the play area was installed and dedicated.

At that time, we ended up with snapping turtles in our yards, because the little creek that runs along beneath the line of willows in the background overflowed. Nobody knew we had them in there, but one evening David and I were out for a walk and encountered a young couple with a snapping turtle in a wheelbarrow, taking it back to the creek. They were attempting, anyway, because it kept trying to crawl out, but they were using a shovel to pick up its front end and dump it back down in the wheelbarrow.

Hey, kids! Get your hipwaders on and let’s go swim with the ducks! Wear the ones with the steel toes, just in case the snapping turtles come out to play!

It’s been raining nearly every day for several weeks now. The lawns are all nice and green and swampy and sloppy, the vegetables are pretty much exploding with juice (splitting is a real problem with tomatoes this season), and when I walked in the house today, my husband David greeted me with this happy phrase:

“We’ve got a leak. It’s puddling outside up against the house, and it’s coming in downstairs.”

Yikes! He had already pulled out some bedding that had been stored down in the laundry room, where the sump pump is, and piled it in the garage to dry out. I had wondered about that when I got in, and also noticed damp footracks on the tile in the entry. Sure enough, David was running around outside and up and down the basement stairs, clearing things out or getting them off the floor.

I went out to see what was what, not bothering with a jacket as I’d already gotten a bit wet working outside at church. Sure enough, there was a pool where the water was backed up against the house, because the downspout extension we had on that gutter had been moved or dislodged (probably by the landscape guys when they mowed the lawn). David was in the process of adding on a second downspout extension (the plastic kind that has accordion pleats) to take the water further away from the house and a bit farther downhill.

That done, we discussed options on getting rid of the standing pool. David wanted to try the wet-dry vac, but I thought a garden hose or a sufficient length of tubing could be used to siphon the water out. He wasn’t so sure, thinking that it would all have to be sucked like a straw, and it wouldn’t make it over the “hump” where the lawn needs to be graded to slope away from the house, instead of toward it. But we had a spare garden hose that was both brand new and really long, so we laid it out down the yard and into the street (with some difficulty, as it’s a cheapo vinyl one and it tends to kink up).  I volunteered to supply the reverse lung power.

At first, I tried to do it the hard way – taking a deep breath and trying to power the water through the hose, but then remembered how as a kid (this is disgusting), I used to  siphon water out of a disconnected hose rather than go all the way back in the house for a drink by sort of slurping and using my tongue and the roof of my mouth to act like a one-way pump, so that the water couldn’t flow backwards each time (also, so I could still breathe through my nose). Within a minute or two, I knew the water was about to flow, and David called out that it was definitely being pulled into the hose.

Wa-la! The hose started gushing a respectable amount of water into the street, where I laid the end of the hose as low as it could so that the rainwater would go into the storm sewer.  And there was hardly any dirt or mud in it, which was a plus (I’m a hardy tomboy, so dirt and mud were my favorite playthings as a kid).  Quite refreshing, really… but the cold Sprite I’ve got now is probably slightly better for me.

The neighbor guy came out to see what was up, and we discussed gutters and downspouts and leaky basements in a pleasant manner. That gave me a chance to ask why he cut down the little pine tree on the corner of his property; he just didn’t like it, he said, and thought it was a pretty ugly Christmas tree. However, he’d been hearing about it all week from his wife, who he had failed to consult before having the tree cut down. Oops.

I wish it would stop raining and dry out a little – it’s actually quite cool outside, though, so at least it’s not hot and horribly muggy as it was last week. It appears more rain is on the way, and oh goodie, the humidity and high temperatures return, too.

WGN Weather Center Blog: Heavy rains in Chicago as Dean approaches NE Mexico

Heavy rains in Chicago as Dean approaches NE Mexico

With a warm front poised just to the west, widely scattered showers and thunderstorms will threaten the Chicago Air Show later this morning and afternoon. Tonight and Monday morning strong storms with heavy downpours could develop. Localized two to three-inch rains may cause flooding of streets and underpasses as well as some streams. T-storms will be in the forecast off and on through Friday, and rainfall totals for the week could exceed 4” at some rain gage sites. Heat and humidity will return to Chicago with 90° readings as early as Tuesday. Meanwhile, Hurricane Dean will feast on the warm waters of the Caribbean Sea as it passes south of Cuba on a westerly trek toward the southern Gulf of Mexico. Dean seems to be following a similar course as Hurricane Gilbert, which was the strongest hurricane to date in 1988. As it approaches the Yucatan Peninsula Monday, Dean’s sustained winds may peak out well over 160 m.p.h.
–By Paul Dailey, WGN Weather Center Meteorologist

I was in Cancun not very long after Gilberto went through – everything was cleaned up by then, but I had several conversations with cab drivers in my rudimentary Spanish about how bad the storm was, and how at its worst it was making the walls shake at one guy’s house.

Somehow, I doubt Mexico will be asking for much of our help if they get hit… I think they can probably cope better without FEMA screwing things up worse in the aftermath.