Chit Chat

Almost floated away this morning

SBminiSBmini member
500 Love Its 1000 Comments Second Anniversary Name Dropper
edited September 2014 in Chit Chat
Woke up this morning at 2:30 AM to torrential rain. It was hitting our windows sideways and actually making it through a weak seal in one of them. So DH and I spent about half an hour getting that under control then checking the rest of the house for leaks. Then, between the rain on a tin roof sound coming from the downpour hitting the windows and the fact that we got SIX flash flood emergency notifications from 2:30-6 am... hardly any sleep was had.

When we got out of bed at 6 am the drainage basin behind our house was completely full and overflowing into the street behind us. The backyard was completely flooded. There were some leaks but nothing too bad. My phone sent me an alert saying it was going to take 20 minutes longer than normal to get to work. I asked husband to turn on the news because the freeway we take to work routinely floods in downpours. 

The news was telling us about lakes that used to be freeways, entire school districts closed down, flash flood warnings and begging us that if we didn't need to go anywhere to stay home. Two of my husband's coworkers on opposite sides of "the valley" tried to get to work and gave up, returning home when they couldn't pass flooded intersections to get in. Both my work and his delayed the start of the day for multiple hours because of the conditions.

Finally, around 10 am it started to let up and the water was able to leave the freeways. 

It is officially the wettest day on record for Phoenix. They are calling it a 1,000 year event. The airport received 3.25 inches of rain by 10 am this morning. We're up to past 4 inches at our house. Now, that may not sound like a lot- but this is the desert. Our soil does not absorb water, so everything that falls rushes into the streets or retention basins. And, our infrastructure is not built for this much rain in this little bit of time. To put 4 inches into perspective, we've received 7 inches so far this year including today's rain. So more than half of our annual rain fall came in eight hours today.

The office is downright empty. A lot of people didn't even bother coming in. And it is weird that I just got here and the day is half over. Here's some photos of the rain today.

My pool
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Sorry dog, no going this way. This sidewalk is a dam between two retention basins. It's about four of five feet up from the lowest part of the basin
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The lake behind our house. This is the one that was flowing into the street. To put size into perspective, this is probably 10 regular swimming pools of water and it filled up completely in four hours. 

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Also connected to another retention basin. All neighboring houses were thankfully high enough to avoid flooding, but just barely. 
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I-10 freeway going into Phoenix. Apparently, at 4:30 AM police said the road was safe and sent drivers in. 27 of them got stuck and had to be rescued. 
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The water at its hight around 8 am this morning
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We're supposed to have more rain later on today and this evening. The governor has called a state of emergency. It is NUTS! Thankfully the casualty count is very low. One woman passed away when her car was overcome by fast moving water in Tucson. A house was also destroyed by lightning, but everyone made it out OK. I'm hopeful that the luck holds and that we don't get hit again hard tonight. The retention basins won't be empty by then so it could bend up flooding a lot of people if that happens. 
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Re: Almost floated away this morning

  • Wow - those pictures are reminiscent of the ones from Tropical Storm Allison when it hit Houston in 2001.

    Glad you're safe and, for now, dry.  Hopefully you can get home before it rains again.
    Anniversary
  • *shudder* Looks very familiar.

    So glad you are safe!  And dry!
    Wedding Countdown Ticker
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    "I'm not a rude bitch.  I'm ten rude bitches in a large coat."

  • Sheesh! I hope you are able to stay safe!
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  • Wow! I'm so glad you're safe, make sure to stay that way!


  • HOLY COW! I'm glad y'all are safe! 

    At first when said 4 inches of rain, I thought that wasn't much. Then, I remembered you were in Phoenix. Crazy!

  • Thanks guys. They were projecting another wave of rain starting around 4 pm, but that's left the forecast. So hopefully we'll be OK. 
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  • Holy cow!! You be safe out there!
    Anniversary



  • Wow! Hopefully you guys hold up ok. Will you still be at work when it starts up? Can you leave early?
  • I am currently in patient at Mayo in Phoenix and don't have cable. The rain did something to screw it up. My mom was also flipping out because my house is far West Valley and she only knows one way to the hospital since she is from NJ. She made it safely, thankfully, but now we're concerned about the drive home tonight.

    She also said our house made it through, minus the pool of water that formed in our backyard. We never got our backyard landscaped because as soon as we moved in, work announced it was closing and we'd be moving. So, until we're 100% sure we're not selling, we are leaving the backyard untouched. So, it will be messy for it bit!

     







  • I used to live in Phoenix so all of my friends out there have posted these pics on FB and have the day off from work. I know it's not funny, but I still kind of laugh that such a modern city was planned without drainage. They just figured "eh, it doesn't rain often, we won't waste money building that" even though roads flood at least 5 times a year. I mean that would be like here in MA saying well, let's not pay for plow trucks since we only get a huge blizzard 5 times per winter. It's just crazy that they haven't addressed it yet.

                                                                     

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  • Wowza.  I'm glad you & your family are safe, @Sbmini
  • SBminiSBmini member
    500 Love Its 1000 Comments Second Anniversary Name Dropper
    edited September 2014
    jenna8984 said:
    I used to live in Phoenix so all of my friends out there have posted these pics on FB and have the day off from work. I know it's not funny, but I still kind of laugh that such a modern city was planned without drainage. They just figured "eh, it doesn't rain often, we won't waste money building that" even though roads flood at least 5 times a year. I mean that would be like here in MA saying well, let's not pay for plow trucks since we only get a huge blizzard 5 times per winter. It's just crazy that they haven't addressed it yet.
    I think the system as a whole works. Some areas have drainage issues that need to be addressed and probably will now after this storm. But most of the valley made it out of this OK with drainage basins that did their jobs and roadways that emptied out pretty quickly.

    I don't remember the number, but there is only a certain year floor that infrastructure needs to be built to. Yes, it means that sometimes- you go over that number and stuff floods- but it also means that you don't waste a lot of money on unnecessary infrastructure. We can't build everything for 500 or 1,000 year occurances. 
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  • SBmini said:
    jenna8984 said:
    I used to live in Phoenix so all of my friends out there have posted these pics on FB and have the day off from work. I know it's not funny, but I still kind of laugh that such a modern city was planned without drainage. They just figured "eh, it doesn't rain often, we won't waste money building that" even though roads flood at least 5 times a year. I mean that would be like here in MA saying well, let's not pay for plow trucks since we only get a huge blizzard 5 times per winter. It's just crazy that they haven't addressed it yet.
    I think the system as a whole works. Some areas have drainage issues that need to be addressed and probably will now after this storm. But most of the valley made it out of this OK with drainage basins that did their jobs and roadways that emptied out pretty quickly.

    I don't remember the number, but there is only a certain year floor that infrastructure needs to be built to. Yes, it means that sometimes- you go over that number and stuff floods- but it also means that you don't waste a lot of money on unnecessary infrastructure. We can't build everything for 500 or 1,000 year occurances. 
    No I realize that, but when I was there, seemed like a lot of areas which had flooding issues with average rainfall. Maybe the newer areas are getting better about it.

                                                                     

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  • There's definitely some problem areas that need to be addressed. Some streets always flood during strong monsoons and will a few times a year. The fact that the 60 is underwater at least once a year is a problem too. But I think they fixed that because it managed not to flood today, which is a good sign that they are fixing the problems.
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  • Yikes! Metro Detroit has looked like that a few times over the last month so I definitely feel your pain! I hope it clears up for you soon and you don't have too much damage!

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  • jenna8984 said:
    I used to live in Phoenix so all of my friends out there have posted these pics on FB and have the day off from work. I know it's not funny, but I still kind of laugh that such a modern city was planned without drainage. They just figured "eh, it doesn't rain often, we won't waste money building that" even though roads flood at least 5 times a year. I mean that would be like here in MA saying well, let's not pay for plow trucks since we only get a huge blizzard 5 times per winter. It's just crazy that they haven't addressed it yet.
    That's how it is where I live on the rare occasion that it snows. (Snowpocalypse, earlier this year). People laugh at us for shutting down when it snows but we just aren't prepared for it. Also, the conditions aren't right for it to actually snow so it just rains and freezes all the roads over, and since this only happens about once every few years, we don't have plans in place for this type of thing except to shut down businesses and stay off the roads.
    Anniversary



  • Yeah, I live in Tempe, so I've had to deal with it today too.  Other than water dripping through my bathroom ceiling and down my fireplace, we don't have any damage. I wasn't sure I'd make it into work this morning because my car was parked near a low area in my parking lot, so I had over a foot of water to drive through before getting to the main road. But, once I got out, the surface roads weren't too bad on my commute... luckily my commute doesn't involve highways. DH didn't have any problems getting into downtown Phoenix this morning either.  I went home at lunch and most of the water disappeared during that short amount of time. 

    Our infrastructure can actually handle a lot of rain, just not all at once and non-stop.  The infrastructure needs the rain to stop, even just for a short time, to let it start soaking in or pumping out. All the highways have pumps in the low areas. But, on days like today, the rain just falls quicker than the pumps can work and they can't keep up.  I used to live in apartment complex right next to US-60 about 5 years ago when it flooded real bad because a pump failed. They have big retention basis in various locations along the highways with pumps to suck up & hold the water. Our apartment overlooked the basin there, which was a better view than looking at houses, but created horrible mosquitos because it usually had some standing water in it.  DH actually had the ADOT mosquito control guy on speed dial. I actually learned a lot about our highway drainage systems while living next to it and talking to the highway maintenance guys when they came around.

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