White River behind Town Hall
Originally uploaded by me.

The Rain Rain Rain Came Down Down Down....

That's a song from the old Disney Winnie the Pooh movie:
The rain rain rain came down down down
In rushing, rising rivulets,
'Til the river crept out of its bed
And crept right into Piglet's.
Like Piglet, I feared this week that I too might need to place a desperate message requesting rescue into a bottle and post it to Pooh Bear. We got about 6" of rain in three days this week; all the melting snow from the Xmas storm has the ground already completely saturated, and so the river near my house went from 9' to 11' to 13.5' by Friday morning.... The levee is around 16' at its lowest; 15' is the voluntary evacuation level for my town. So at a mere 18" from possible doom, there was much talk of emergency plans, moving furniture, and so on. A bit tense--while my actual house is in little danger, a flood would destroy most of my neighbors. The canoe was ready to deploy. But fortunately, the river seems to have crested at 13.5'. It could, like Jesus, rise again in a few days, as we just got more snow that will melt off tomorrow. But I'd like to think we're out of the woods for now! I was confident enough in the lack of floodage to swing a trip to Chicago this weekend, on which more will be posted later. Returned to find house and street still dry... so all is well.