When it rains, it pours

It rained over the weekend, more than it has in this area since 1882. Its still raining, actually. As it rained more and more on Sunday, the water on the patio started to creep up toward the house. I went outside to start to suck up the water that was filing the window well. Useless. As soon as I would suck it up, new water would replace it.

A friendly neighbor came over and noticed that I was trying to deal with this situation. He offered some sand (about a quarter of two garbage bags worth) and that seemed to help at least slow down the flow but I needed more sand to really make a difference. So, the neighbor (Geoff) and I took the Jeep and set out to Home Depot (HD) since all the local places were closed by this time on Sunday afternoon.

As we're driving on the way to the HD, we see all kinds of water falls, water coming from drain covers in the street, off mountains, from everywhere. As we get closer to the highway where the HD is located, we see barricades and lots of traffic being diverted. Turns out that highway is closed because its flooded. We turn around and set off to anther HD. 15 minutes later, we get off the next highway and see that many cars are stopped and starting to turn around. Another road flooded - the one where the HD is. We take an alternate route, go through some back roads (I'm very fortunate Geoff is there because he knows how to navigate to alternate routes) and see that coming from the other direction, there is a police car blocking one side of the road. I waited and watched while a couple of other cars went through a parking lot to get around this situation and he wasn't chasing anyone. I decide to go for it. Fortunately, the intersection where the HD is was flooded but not bad enough that I couldn't make it through in the Jeep.

As we entered the store, there were very few people there but I'm sure 90% of them were looking to solve some flooding issues. There was an announcement on the PA, "All sump pumps are sold out". Fortunately, I wasn't there for a pump. I wanted sand. I bought 200lbs of sand and we left.

Fortunately, that did fix the problem because the sand helped slow the accumulation of water in the window well which meant the sump pump can take care of the rest. To our surprise, the entire patio was clear in the morning - even though it was still raining.