Day 1 of Biblical Rainstorm 2010

Well, we survived the first of at least four rounds of heavy wind and rain set to his So Cal this week. I actually started raining Sunday afternoon and continued as a modest pace until about 1pm on Monday when it started getting serious about it. Lots of rain and lots of wind, but nothing we couldn't handle. The official HolyCoast rain gauge (a bucket in my backyard) showed somewhere between 2" and 3" since Sunday afternoon.

In anticipation my son and I put up some plastic sheeting over a section of the backyard wall where we've had flooding problems before. If the wind is out of the south (as it was today), rain gets blown up against that wall and can actually get in through the electrical and cable TV panels if it's coming hard enough. Some years ago we ended up with a bunch of watch in the living room that way.

Nothing got in the house but there was an awful lot of standing water in the backyard where I don't really like to see it. Time for a little backyard engineering.

I have an extra fountain pump and about 20 feet of plastic tubing that I use when I drain the water feature to clean it. I hooked that pump up, ran the tubing out the back fence to the storm drain, and put it in the standing water in back. I ran it for at least 45 minutes until the rain ended and it pretty well stopped the problem. I'm going to leave it hooked up and ready to go so I'll have it for rounds 2, 3 and 4 as the week progresses.

Sounds like most of So Cal escaped severe problems with this storm, but with each progressive storm the ground gets more and more saturated and the excess water will have to go somewhere.

Stay tuned.