Wildest Storm Ever Experienced!

 Yeah it was quite a week.  A typical summer day the other day, wife and I made some salad for dinner . . . was outside afterwards and pretty much out of nowhere it started blowing and raining heavy.  Then it started to hail like crazy.  I ran out into it and pulled my son Skylar's car in garage and started shooting some video on my phone . . . then Lindsay ran out into the garage yelling "the basement is flooding!"

Yikes!  Ran into the basement (where my music gear is...guitars, amps, drum set, electric piano etc) and see, basically, something like a fire hose of water blasting through the edges of the back door (walkout area).

Water is pouring in, starting to get deep...headed down the hall, into my son Isaac's room. . . .

The pressure of the pouring-in water was too great to hold back.  I ran outside in back yard to the walkout stairwell area.  Sky was already out there with snow shovel trying to deflect the flow as much as possible.  Meanwhile it is crazy constant thunder and lightning all around us in the dark (we live on a bit of a mountain, so it was CLOSE lightning flashing all around!). . . .

I figured the drain at the bottom of the walkout stairwell well was probably clogged with debris, which is why the water was pooling against the basement door.  It was about 3 feet deep!  I couldn't reach in it to clear the drain. . . . 

I ran to garage, soaking wet, got every drop cloth I owned and stuffed them against gushing water coming through back basement door.  It didn't really do much--pressure too great.  So I got a PLASTIC drop cloth and put it on the outside of the door, hoping the pressure of the water against it would somewhat seal against the door-jam edges where the water was pouring through (which it somewhat did).

But basically, we were screwed until, hopefully! the rain finally slowed down or stopped.

It was easily the wildest, heaviest, most sudden and violent storm I've ever experienced!  

We live at the base of big mountain hill the rises up from our backyard--so tons of dirt, mud and mountain debris came down with the gushing water into our back yard, and of course, into the basement, leaving a thick layer of silt once it dried out.

Well, there was all kinds of damage around the town, and in other houses to varying degrees.  Many had their basement's flooded.  The water quantity and violence of the sudden down-pouring was just too overwhelming to drains or gutters etc to deflect it.  Whole sidewalks caved into sinkholes in places.  And, of course, we don't have "flood insurance" living on a mountain, as we do.

Anyway, lol, IT WS WILD!  

We are still cleaning up.  It COULD have been worse, of course (I always try to look on the bright side:).

But yeah.  Crazy.  Aaaand, I will say, felt a bit unnatural.  The suddenness, the force, the quantity of rain etc.   I do believe a lot of the extreme weather we are all being subject to, is due to "geo-engineering'--weather-warfare.

But we're okay.  Just a bit torn up and still mucking out the leftover dirt and debris. . . .