Where's my Life Boat

It's hard to believe that just about this time last year I was packing frantically so we could be out of the Glenway House in 14 days. The house sold in four days and they wanted to move in no later than the last week end of the month. We moved but didn't close by hey that's a story from 2011 so if you're new you can go read the chaos starting in around June in 2011. So this year I'm thinking my lake front property is a little closer than I like. According to our rain gauge we had already received about 6.5" of rain between Sunday and Wednesday with no end in sight. We never expected the 14" that got dumped on us. When I walked out on the patio Thursday morning the rain was coming down hard and our yards were already starting to fill with water in the low areas.

 Forcasts show rain everyday for the next 10 days. Wow really!?



David left for work around 5:15am and while it was raining but he had no problem getting down the road but then when I left at

6:40am it was pouring and as I turned out of the subdivision water was already running across road. It may be hard to see but it was rushing like river.

Down the road there's this house that I couldn't see anything but water, it had no yard. I continued on and wish I hadn't. It got to a point where I couldn't even see the driveways to turn around and it was raining harder and my windows kept fogging up. What's a little fun in the country. I was stressed to the max and started to cry thinking I wish I had stayed at home.

I watched while the cars in front of me drove thru the water to determine the depth of the water flowing across the road. All That flowing water made me very nervous. While stopped I pulled out my camera and just held it up at different points in my travel and snapped. I had no clue if I captured the roads, the sky or the door. I just snapped. Here's what I caught.....

 

I know you can't tell much but that's about what I could see too while driving.

It took me an 1 1/2 hours to get to work that day. Normally it takes around 30 minutes.
Sorry for quality but I just held the camera up and snapped.







Around 11 maybe I don't know what time it was but I called my neighbor and asked her about the lake. She tells me it's out of it's banks. Oh great, so I ask her if maybe she gets a chance to take some pictures and send them to me. She graciously complied.  My heart sank. And here's a couple of the pictures Deborah sent to me just after 1pm. The first picture is of her backyard and garage.
 






This next picture she took off her porch towards my house.

 You can just barely see my flower pots and the back of my garage just pass the white gargage door sitting surrounded by water in the distance..







Around 3pm the rain finally stopped and Deborah was able to walk down to view our house up close. This picture looks like the water is right up to the house slab. My house is the red brick one. Thank goodness there was about 6" between the slab and the water. Then once the water touched slab it would have to rise about another 14-18". We have very high slabs. Someone was thinking ahead maybe.
 





The lake just circled around our house.
 
  





















As I traveled outbound down 290 I passed Sysco Foods originally Texas Instruments/Compact and I noticed that the parking lot was totally submerged!
My friend Lynn works there and they were released around 1pm Thursday before it got any deeper. What I could see was bad enough.


The only way we could get home it seemed was to go out 290 pass our Mueschke exit a few miles down to 2920 and come back toward Mueshke. All other roads before Muescke and between 2920 were flooded and closed. But even 2920 had obsticales like a 3-4 block stretch of the road that had water rushing acossing it.

The water was just rushing of the fields into the ditches and across the roads.

After traveling down 2920 I finally get to Mueschke and travel that last mile to find More water.

To give you an idea how fast all the water was flowing I was able to stop and snap this picture of the water flowing into the lake. It looked just like this on the roads during my morning drive and my drive home. Normally there's no water in this ditch.

It had been 3 1/2 hours since the last rain shower and the lake was starting to recede by the time David and I got home. It took him two hours to get home. It took me an hour and 15 minutes since I already knew what roads to avoid since he'd already tried them. Our front yard was almost clear of water but not the back. HOLY COW!

It was so sunny you'd never know that it had been storming other than the water and debris left behind.

The water had covered the smaller 10x14 patio pad but never came over the top of the main patio and porch Thankfully.

I hope I never see this much water so close to the house again but I'm not sure I'll get that wish. I never dreamed of it getting as high as it did this time

It looks so weird with all the water in our backyard. Only the lake existed. Friday morning the lake had receded almost totally back into it's banks. As of today we are still getting small showers but nothing big Thank God.

This is the side and you can see how close the water got to the workshop/4th bay garage addition.

All that brown trail..........Ants! They're everywhere. Floating on the water and running around like crazy on land.

Now one of the craziest things I saw was this kid riding his bike along the bank of the lake that was underwater. You can see the water covers almost half of the wheel. All it would take is a bump for him to fall in the lake to his right or the ditch to his left that separates the lake and our yards. Now You wouldn't catch me in this water with all the bugs and possible snakes. We have no fear as kids but as adults it's a different story. With age comes knowledge, That can be good and bad.
Friday morning we woke to the lake back in it's banks. I think our back and front yards look much better green grass showing.  So we decide to venture out to see if the roads have cleared.
And here's what we found....
Cypress Rosehill was technically still closed but some were going around the road block @ K-Z road.

The car in front of us wasn't so brave and turned around. We followed suit. We weren't gonna take any chances.

And on Mueschke the water was navigatible if you have a truck. The white building you can kinda see on the left is the Sand Lots/Base Ball Camp where they had to rescue those kids and camp councilors by boat Thursday. David said that when tried to come home that way on Thursday there was an 18 wheeler floating in the middle of the road.

Even this little guy below needed a break from the water. If we had a net we could of collected enough mudbugs and had a crawfish boil. They were along the waters edge of the ditch and up in the yard everywhere. I think every bug and spider gathered at our back door. YUCK!! When David got home and opened the back door it was covered and they started jumping off in the house. David became the great white hunter of crawly things. I hate spiders and snakes. Thank goodness I have not seen any slethering slimmy snakes.

The spiders were hobbile. There were so many of them.  David did lots of spraying while I was away Saturday and Sunday. That's another story for my next post. I have lots of things to write about but for now the rain, the flood and spiders got first post. LOL 

Look what greeted me at the back door Monday morning. From leg to leg he was about 2". Gave me the hibby jibbies. Thank goodness he didn't move. I don't know what kind he was but he is now a smushed up spider. Some how he had survived the Demon Bug Spray but he didn't survive David's big push broom left by the garage wall. Then a mockingbird swoped in and ate him.

(cringing even now)

Well until next post.... Stay safe and dry. Quack Quack