Thursday, November 12, 2009

Tropical Storm and Open Back Door

We're having a tropical storm, or a nor'easter, or something. Lots of wind and continuous rain. When last I heard, there's supposed to be 4 inches of rain this morning, water levels possibly 6-8 feet higher than normal, power outages, and so on. However, we won't be flooded unless the river gets at least six feet higher than it already is (rather than "six feet higher than normal"). I don't see the water getting that high--as it gets higher, it'll flood lower lying places first, which means it'll cover more area, which means it'll need a lot more volume of water to raise the level from 6ft to 6ft 1inch than it did to raise it from normal to normal-plus-one inch. That'll be rough on some of our neighbors--one of the houses on the other side of the river looked like it might flood if the level rises another foot--but we should still stay dry.

Except for the fact that my wife's dog (called "Zoe" or "Mutt!", depending) has recently learned to open the sliding glass door onto the back deck. We leave the deck door open fairly often so we weren't sure about that till now; but I latched the door this morning before I left for work, and when my wife got home an hour later, the door was open and the mutt was eagerly pacing on the deck in the rain and wind.

edit Friday morning: water was about a foot higher at this morning's high tide. Looks like the guy across the river has his foundation wet, and CNN has a posting from someone kayaking through the streets in Portsmouth, but we're fine.

3 comments:

Lux Mentis said...

Seems like it might be wise to keep a PFD or two handy.... (and have a flotation rig for the dog)....

Hope that conditions don't get much worse. Flooding sucks. Had that one time when a sump pump conked out. Much prefer my parents current home, many feet up a sandy hill (like over a hundred). For them to be flooded (or even get the sump to have water in it) would mean the river would probably have to rise 100'+.

Hint to homebuyers: Watch for floodplanes, tornado alleys, hurricane coasts, etc. The Canadian Shield is solid, has few tornados, in most places is far enough inland to avoid big storms, and if you pick a smart spot, is hard to flood. The only real danger is the yearly blizzard (not much) and the 40-year ice storm (still not much).

I think people who persist in rebuilding on the Gulf Coast or in New Orleans need to give their head a shake.

Anyway, good luck with the inclement weather. Keep the pooch tied down (even though the pooch will be keyed up by the storm weather).

Anonymous said...

I kayaked around in that inflatable kayak in our parking lot a few years ago.

Laserlight said...

Fortunately the parking lot was flooded because of a problem with the storm drains, and that was fixed. Kayaking in the parking lot would be fun once or twice, but slogging through ankle deep water to get to the car any time there was a heavy rain, not so much.