monsoon 2014 second post

The first big storm arrived at about 3 a.m. A little thunder and then the rain began.  By morning, when I got up and looked outside, I was amazed at how much water was accumulating everywhere. It was raining hard. I put on the news and discovered just how bad things were getting and a small indication of how the day was going to be. There had already been so much flooding across the city with accidents and road closures everywhere. When it rains so much in the desert there is nowhere for the water to go. It doesn't have a chance to soak into the ground, so it just starts flowing. 

This is at the bottom of our front yard. Usually this is dry. 

The back yard was filling up too. Water was back flowing onto the patio, which it has never come that close to the house before. I was feeling a little concern. I will note here that Chuck was in Canada, at just the beginning of his 10 day fishing trip. I only say that because the news broadcasters were starting to throw out terms like..."100 year flood"... "Monsoon of the century"... "major flooding to the north" (right where we live)... and the most concerning of all...the small ticker message that runs across the bottom of the screen with warnings... listing police departments and fire departments that had sand bags available for protecting your home. Did I need to get sand bags to build a protective wall around our house?

And then images like this started showing up on the t.v. The water you see coming up to the highway is normally never there. It is a dry wash, of course intended for water to flow, but it had gone way above the wash area and eventually overflowed onto the highway. This is the Carefree Highway. Close to us.

And this. Embankments that failed and water started flowing.

An area called New River, which is just north of here, was flooding terribly.

Then helicopter recues were beginning. People were being washed away in their cars and even one house. There were two people inside.

By later afternoon, rainfall totals were being reported.  This is in our general area.

My neighbors were out of town and I was watching there house for them and watering the plants(that ended up being an easy job as I didn't need to water at all). However, they had recently had a leaky spot in their roof, so I went over to check that it was not coming in the house. What I found instead was their back patio area filling with water. By later afternoon it was well over my ankles. Somewhere, back in my memory, when I first started watering for them a couple of years ago, I remembered him telling me to start at one end with the hose and let in run. The down slope will carry the water all the way to the corner because there is a small drain there. That little phrase "there is a drain there" popped into my head, thankfully, as the water was coming very close to the bottom of the door. Once I dug away all the old leaves and debris it was like pulling the plug on a bathtub...the water started flowing out the other side of the wall. Goodness.

This photo was taken early in the afternoon. By the time the rain started to ease up for the day, the water in the pool had reached the edge tile. It had raised about 3 inches from where the water is at normally.  

The next morning I discovered this little guy in the pool. 

It was a lot of rain and a whole lot of mess. So many people in the New River area lost outbuildings, animals, cars and the list goes on. It is an ironic name for the town that is usually desert. Many homes were built close to the wash, which now it is apparent that the washes are there for a reason and even though it has never happened in most of our lives , perhaps it did way-back-when and that is how the town got its name. After a big rainstorm, a town that was always dry and very much a desert, now had a new river flowing through it.

I was happy to report that our pool didn't overflow and we did not have any damage with this storm.

But that was round one.