 |
| water covering a highway and new water park I've been to with grandkids |
I was sleeping. My wife woke me up and told me the downpour was really bad and kindly suggested (her version, my version was more of an order) that I adjust the drain hose on the downspout.
Bear with me while I take a brief tangent to explain some background. Our house is not very large nor expensive (I’m sure those are related) so my wife swaps the seasonal coats around in the limited 1st floor closet space. Second notable item, we are experiencing a delayed winter. Before I could dash outside I had to wake up and get my rain jacket from its basement storage area (also I’m not a morning person).
As I lumbered down to the basement I saw the message Mother Nature left (so nice to leave messages). Mother Nature called to tell me our sump pump was dead. She displayed the message all across the basement floor.
 |
| extracted dead pump - could be from a sunken treasure find |
When water starts flowing across a basement floor you notice all types of cardboard boxes that you didn’t realize were there. The morning was spent moving, clearing, dumping, wet vacuuming, and squeegee pushing. By mid afternoon I had extracted the dead pump.
Our problems were minor compared to others in our village and surrounding area. If you lived near a small stream, you discovered the now river strength water was asking to take you house along with it. A section of major highway through our village was completely under water (see pic below). A parking lot at a nearby grocery store had become a good size lake with cars forming islands.
According to regional weather forecasters more rain has fallen in this month of April (still more that a week left) than during ALL of last summer. Our village of Lisle made the top of one list of rainfall measurements on the local news. It was over 6 inches. Lisle was also mentioned by Brian Williams on the NBC national news.
Photos from Chicago Weather Center Blog and Huffington Post. You can find more photos by following the links back to those sites.
 |
| retirement home rescue |
Every Sunday since my blog started getting visited by Unknown Mami there has been a photo sharing/linking post at her blog. Check it out.
