It started raining around two this afternoon, first sporadic rain with fat, lazy drops, then steady rain, then torrential rain.

In the past, such rain worried me because of flooding in our basement. With the leak in our roof, I now have different concerns. As the storm grew and the wind blew harder, I wonder whether or not I’d secured the two tarps protecting our roof well enough to keep them in place with such a storm. There was really nothing I could do about it at the time, of course: it would not have been remotely safe to head onto the roof in a storm to put down additional weight to keep the tarps from flying off.

In the end, my worries were for nothing: the tarps stayed in place; the sump basin didn’t even have much water in it, so the basement wasn’t even close to being threatened.

Yet we still had a lake in our backyard: the creek didn’t crest but we had essentially one big puddle in the lowest part of our yard, so after we finished playing a game (“Ticket to Ride” — I never play to win; I play to block other players — you can’t lose if you’re not trying to win!), E and I struck out to see what was going on in the neighborhood.

We weren’t prepared for what we found:

To begin with, there is a house basically in a hole that has an enormous backyard — I thought it was a park when we first moved here.

The road that goes by it was closed because their yard, which is in reality just a drainage basin for the surrounding community, was completely flooded.

Completely.

So much so that the culvert under the road was completely submerged, creating a whirlpool as the water tried to drain.

We stood in the road looking at the whirlpool, right at the edge of the water. We’re past the time of E asking questions like, “Daddy, what would happen if I fell in that water?” He knows. He likes to show he knows. “Boy, Daddy, if I fell in that…” and his voice trailed off for effect.

It gave me a little shudder, the shudder of a parent having nightmarish visions of the worst possible outcome. Once such thoughts enter my mind, it’s hard to shake them. The Boy seemed to realize that. “Come on, Daddy, let’s go back to the other side.

All that water — undoubtedly the worst flooding we’ve seen there. It was still nothing compared to what we saw later, downstream. We walk by here almost every night — it’s K’s favorite walk.

The creek that was forming the whirlpool earlier joins with another creek at this point, and the two completely covered the flat land around it.

We headed back home, still having fun on the way.

In the evening, we went for a walk to show the girls what it looked like. Of course, most of the water had subsided, but there was still enough to be impressive, and just enough to enjoy safely.