I have not yet checked the rain gauge this “fine” Sunday morning, but yesterday we got over 6 inches here in the southern suburbs. My west yard and the back yard are a free flowing stream at this point. I have the sump pump going almost constantly.
I also confess I am going a bit loopy due to the constancy of it. We usually don’t get steady heavy rain for days.
Are all of you staying dry? Any basements flooded? Renting canoes yet? Tell your story here.
I hope this does not turn into the type of flooding event which the midwest saw this past year. Y’all please stay alert and be careful. Floods are the #1 natural disaster in the United States.
Interesting factoid about hurricane rains: In 1969, the remnants of Camille flooded Virginia with up to 27 inches of rain (unofficial max was 31 inches). This rainfall was subsequently used in design as the Probable Maximum Precipitation up until very recently here (may still be used elsewhere). Now we’re using an amount somewhere around 40 inches in 24 hours.
Here’s a page with tips on what to do before, during, and after a flood.
Cook County has new flood maps out; dated 8/19/2008. These can be looked up and viewed here.
Flooding conditions by stream gauge can be tracked here.
NOAA has a forecast page for stream levels here. You can check to see if a stream is forecast to have no flooding, minor flooding, moderate flooding, or major flooding.
(Sorry about the lengthy PSA, eleanorigby. Hope you stay dry!)
Little leak in the basement, same as every other incident like this. Nothing major yet. I was surprised to see our area on the national news within the last hour, but I guess we’ve gotten the leftovers from the last hurricane and this, so maybe it’s not that surprising.
I’m alive and kicking, but haven’t yet gone down into the basement to see what horrors might be down there. I didn’t think to yesterday, as all I could think about was how drenched I was from waiting for buses in the morning, and then I collapsed in the afternoon. The sleep, it was so nice.
Clearly, today will be the day to inspect the basement. Good times, good times.
3 and 1/2 inches of rain last night and it’s pouring now. I am off to the grocery store soon–luckily I don’t have to pass through any viaducts to get there. I heard that parts of I-94 are closed due to flooding. The golf course across the street looks more like a water park.
Good luck on the basement. We have trickles into the laundry room (bad door seal, concrete floor, I don’t care too much), but we are dry so far.
Thanks for the flood map.
Another inch in the rain gauge now. Getting to the store was interesting, as I took the Mini Cooper. Not the best plan, but my car was already in use. Lots of puddles out there–small lakes, really.
My basement is currently, and surprisingly, dry as a bone.
It’s still rainy and wet outside, though. My roommate braved the weather to get herself pizza for lunch. I am not so brave. My lunch shall be pasta!
Not raining and a little brighter out at the moment. My weekend was badly wounded by the weather.
It was time for the annual amateur radio festival that I traditionally drive to on Friday evening and camp overnight (@Boone Co Fairgrounds). I do this to get an early start on digging through all the outdoor fleamarket vendors for deals first thing in the morning. Many of these vendors saw the forecast and ditched. I guess that’s one way to keep te spending down.
After that, I had plans to attend a backyard bbq party a work buddy’s band was playing at. It was all the way up in Crystal Lake, I was tired from ‘camping’ in my car and I couldn’t get ahold of dude to find out if the party was still going on. I couln’t ditch him so I drove up blind. It wound up being pretty nice considering. The host had rented 2 large canopies and some catered food. The rain and mud clearly made this one a bust, too.
And Sunday’s have been to play Ultimate Frisbee or other atheleticky-type activity all summer. That’s obviously not happening today, either.
Hey, you! Haven’t seen you around in awhile. Glad to see you don’t have webbed feet yet.
The rain has stopped here (for now–I’m not putting any stock in it yet). The pump is still going but is getting ahead of the water now. yay.
Luckily I’m on a second floor so aside from a little leaking in the skylight in my entranceway I stayed pretty dry. Celtic Fest got pretty much rained out 
Gonna hop on the bike in a bit and head out to see some friends, take a break from packing and throwing stuff away.
Aside from a few leaks (nothing major) in the basement everything here is okay.
Let me just say that I cannot believe how many people are not prepared for this sort of event. Sure, a rain like this does not happen frequently, but come on, people, if your sump pump doesn’t work don’t wait for the rain of the century to get a new one! I work at a home improvement store that does not sponsor Tony Stewart and cannot tell you how many times I have been yelled at this weekend by customers because we ran out of sump pumps. We had approx. 75 pumps on Friday. We ran out Saturday, got an emergency shipment from the DC late Saturday night (about 100 pumps), and had sold out of those by 1:00 PM Sunday. Yet we had people coming in until close tonight looking for those damn pumps!
Please, do me and every other home improvement wage slave a favor…grab a bucket, fill it with water, and dump it into your sump pit and test your pump. If it doesn’t work, replace it now, not WHEN WE GET 7 FRICKIN’ INCHES OF RAIN IN 2 DAYS!!!
And get a wet/dry vac while you’re at it!
7 inches? We got over 10 down here. Butterfield Creek, which runs at about 4 feet is right now running at 12.
I am starting to quack at random intervals. I hear you on the pump. We’ve had ours for years (and thank god it didn’t decide to die this weekend).
The local HS is closed tomorrow (it hasn’t closed in something like 10 years for anything).
Here is a facebook:
Oops–more like it hasn’t closed since 1979 (for the blizzard), IMS.
Looks like two of the buildings are flooded with carpet damage etc. Parent night is this Thursday. :eek:
Our basement has water for the first time since we moved in 9 years ago (if the previous owners can be believed, for the first time in 35+ years). Luckily, it’s not much, but we were pretty surprised. Think we may look into a sump pump when things dry out.
Northwest Indiana here.
Some ceiling leaks and half my garden is underwater now, but our building stayed above water. Not so many of my neighbors. Three blocks away they have 2 feet of water in the streets and their homes. A LOT of the roads in Lake and Porter counties are under water, including main thoroughfares and I-94.
Good thing we haven’t needed to go anywhere the last few days, as it looks like we wouldn’t have been able to get there. The grocery store, for instance - can’t get there from here no more.
I think the rain finally stopped here.
I hope so, your garden! Although maybe you had already harvested? I know our season is crazy long here, so I can’t go by that.
I just read this bizarre line in an article about Ike, when I wasn’t even looking for information about the rain in Chicago.
Wait, WHAT? I live in Albany Park and I didn’t see any flooding on my way home from work, let alone people in boats. And Albany Park is not “suburban,” it’s on the frickin’ Brown line! Where does this stuff come from?
I’m mad because they cancelled the Celtic Fest because of the rain. I got off at 6, and walked over to Grant Park for a 7:45 show with Mary Jane Lamond. Imagine my surprise when the whole park was practically deserted when I got there. Some maintenance people told me the Fest had been cancelled. And the rain had stopped a few hours before.
Right now I’m also glad to be a second-floor apartment dweller. I should probably check the basement storage locker to make sure everything is OK, but most everything down there is up off the floor and/or in big plastic storage tubs, so it should be OK. Mom’s basement has a bit of water, but not near her storage locker (though apparently the other side of the basement, where the washers are, has several inches of water).
That sucks about the Celtic Fest, although at least I’m not quite so bummed that we never made it down there because of this weekend’s ongoing family drama. I really wanted to see Leahy again.
Leahy’s wonderful, but I had a personal reason to see Mary Jane Lamond, and I missed going there Saturday night because I was too tired after work (I work every weekend and have to get up very early). I wish I had. I actually left work around 6:45. By the time I got to Grant Park, walking from River North (Wells & Chicago area) with a detour to the Dominicks by Columbus & Illinois, it was around 7:50. I expected Leahy to still be playing, and was glad that I’d at least get to hear some of the music as I walked by. My first clue that something was very strange was there were no music and no people. Even if Leahy had done a short set, there still should have been hundreds of people making their way out of the Patrillo area. Not a soul.
[massive hijack]I want to slap someone from the City of Chicago Celtic Fest web site. I went there at work to find out exactly where Mary Jane Lamond was playing, which was something called the “Gathering Tent.” But not only did their stupid pdf map not work for me (I tried it both at home and at work and had no luck either place), there wasn’t any mention on the front page of a minor little detail like, oh, THAT THE FUCKING FEST HAD BEEN CANCELLED! If I’d known that I would have gone to Costco instead of walking to Grant Park. [/massive hijack, sorry, I just had to get that off my chest]