And the back yard looks like the Rio Grande

I did not go to the library as originally planned this weekend. Mother Nature had other ideas. Yes, we're all safe. We are fortunate to live on a hill and in an area of Franklin where the nearest body of water is a small creek on the far side of a road and a field, and no dam breakages affect us. Even so, the aforementioned creek joined forces with a chain of lowlying and saturated fields and created a river on the far side of the road behind our house. Toward noon, it broke across the road in front of the subdivision's entrance. The main road through town, U.S. 31, was flooded and closed in several places, too, so we just stayed put. I did take the dog and go out to survey the neighborhood on foot after it finally stopped raining. Yeah, seeing the road turned into a river was pretty freaky, but what really creeped me out was the constant sound of several helicopters and assorted police and rescue vehicle sirens going off. For our subdivision, the flooding was mostly a minor inconvenience at worst and in many cases just a novelty. Hearing the sounds of the real crisis in the near distance made me feel remotely guilty and very grateful.

Although, of course, through it all my writer-senses were kicking in. "Watch how the flooding progresses along the stream and the fields back there. See how it finds the path of least resistance? How strong a current do you think that is? How long is it taking the water to rise? How long to recede again? Remember how this looks, what it feels like." Did I mention that the current setting of Crowmaker is a flood-stranded river town?

The water has gone down a good deal now, but the more severely affected locations still have to worry about rain that fell north of us and how that is flowing downstream to us. There's also rain in the forecast for Monday evening. We got off easy, with just a couple of minor roof and basement leaks brought on by the storm itself; I'm keeping the folks who've been less fortunate in my prayers.