The Joy of a Working Sump Pump

We've been having computer issues and it's made it difficult to get posts done, but we got another reminder of how petty most of my complaints typically are when we turned on the local news last night. The video attached to that KARE report shows a flooded parking lot in an apartment complex in New Brighton. That apartment complex is about five blocks from where I live. Another news report showed residents in a St. Anthony townhome complex called Mirror Lake Manor who were dealing with about a foot of water in their units. Mirror Lake Manor is directly behind our home.

So how much water did we get in our basement? Not a drop. In fact, we didn't even realize the carnage that happened all around us until we watched the news. As it turned out, the torrential thunderstorm that hit us on Friday night and Saturday morning dumped about 5 inches of rain in about a 2 hour period in our area. 35W, which runs about a mile to the east of our home, was closed at the 694 interchange. Valentine Park in Arden Hills was transformed into a lake and the little league field there, where both our kids have played was under about 2 feet of water.

I don't know how it can happen that you can remain dry when there is flooding all around you. Our house sits about 20-30 feet higher than the affected part of Mirror Lake Manor, so I'm certain some of the water that landed on us made its way down there. To my knowledge, none of my neighbors on our street had any flooding at all. We don't sit on particularly high ground, but when you get that kind of water, there's not much you can do. Water will find its level and it will show no mercy when it does.

We're now in for a week in which the weather will be more like Jakarta than Minnesota. I'm really going to try not to complain that much about it, considering how fortunate we were on Saturday morning.