Flash Flood Redux and Design Wall Monday

There has been enough rain.

Yesterday was warm, but rainy. It kept up pretty much all day. Just as we were finishing up our regular Sunday night dinner with my dad, the rain seemed to pick up. We dawdled for a while, waiting for it to subside so I could drive him back to his apartment, but finally because it was getting late we decided to go ahead and go.

Cue the deluge.

By the time we drove to the end of the street, I could barely see the road. It felt a bit like driving into the business end of a fire hose. That lasted for about five minutes, then let up. Just as I was beginning to draw a sigh of relief, the fire hose started up all over again.

My strategy was to drive really slowly and watch the center line in the road. That was working, until we turned on to a side street and the center line just disappeared. I could dimly see the car ahead of me turning the corner where I needed to turn and it looked an awful lot like the water was up to the bottom of the doors of the car. The center line hadn't disappeared--it was just covered in water.

As we turned around in a parking lot I mulled over going back home or trying a different route. I decided to try the different route. Again, the rain let up a bit so I could see where I was going. But, as we got on the street where my dad lives the situation was getting steadily worse. The torrents of rain started again, making visibility nearly impossible, except for the brief snatch of time the wipers cleared the windshield before the streams of rain hit it again.

We made it another block, just to the driveway of the apartment building. Now, running parallel to the road we were on is a drainage ditch. The driveway for the apartment building crosses the ditch, then bends around as you drive toward the front doors. Last night the ditch had flooded. It was impossible to even see where the driveway was because the water covered everything. Just to underscore that, there was a car IN the ditch at a sickening angle. Evidently they had misjudged where the driveway was.

Ahead of me I could just make out cars backing up and trying to turn around to come back towards us--evidently the road had flooded there. To the left was a side street with water flowing down it (toward us!) like a small river.

I opted to turn into the side street and look for a place to safely turn around. We drove out of there very carefully and slowly and picked our way back to my house. My dad spent the night comfortably in a motel near us.

Phew!

We got nearly 6 inches of rain over the course of the day yesterday. Four inches of that rain happened in the hour I spent trying to drive dad home.

If you think we've had enough, check out the Atlanta area where they've had even more, and their rain is continuing.

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Just so you won't think this is turning into a weather blog, there is some quilting content here. I worked on the rail fence quilt Saturday afternoon. I've got all but the center strips put together. Working on this quilt has been fun because I have enjoyed remembering when and where I bought all these fabrics. Some of these are scraps left over from other quilts and some were just pieces I bought because I liked them. It's a good feeling to use up these scraps that have been sitting around in baskets and bins for a good while.

The blocks are 3 1/2 inches. I think I'll have enough of the fabric I'm using for the setting squares to do 12 x 15 blocks. It's possible I may be able to eke out more, but we'll see. I'm going to use another, darker fabric for the outside triangles. With a border this may end up being a small twin size quilt.




I'm participating in Judy's Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times. Check out her blog to see what others have up on their design walls.

Wishing all of you a dry (or at least a flashflood free) week!