EVERYONE I know who doesn't live in this area had no idea this just happened, (media is apparently acting like a major US city waterlogged just shy of a disaster is just local news) so, I might as well make a post of it.

Yesterday it rained all day and was unusually gloomy. Instead of daylight, the sky gradually brightened to a twilight night, then got darker again. Until the ground was good and saturated.

THEN we were hit with a thunderstorm of epic proportions. By "epic" I mean it was more than double the all-time single day rainfall record!

I can't say how well other people fared, but we got to watch as our front street flooded. That's not that unusual, (sometimes the storm drain is clogged with leaves and branches) what WAS unusual was the backyard flooded at the SAME TIME, deeper than I've ever seen it. One raised spot we've used for compost now and then turned into a tiny island. I'd even have taken a pic, but the rain was so thick it was a gray-white blur from the house. (And I wasn't going to take our electronic camera out in THAT for a closer shot...)

Surprisingly, our basement DIDN'T flood this time. Seems we finally got all the leaks patched last year.

And the neighborhood kids LOVED it... the ones that play outside all the time, anyway. To the fierce lighting and thunder was added the squeals of children jumping up and down in the brand-new pond filling their yard. :p

The rest of the city... in Detroit especially, (FYI the Detroit metro area is a big sprawl, really, Detroit city limits just an imaginary line carving out a chunk of the middle - the chunk nobody else wants anymore) the storm drain system filled up and people watched as the streets spontaneously erupted and flooded themselves. The footage on last night's news was unreal. This also happened in all the major highways (bit of a misnomer they're all cuts in the ground here) so every one of them has at least one section that's filled to the brim. This means that if the bridge clearance of surface streets is say, 14'8", there is 14'8" of water in the "trench". This is going to take a while to pump out.

This morning, the craziest news story (I didn't see it (sleeping in as usual) but it wowed my Mom) one TV news anchor had a surplus Vietnam-era army truck, maintained in working order by a private collector. It was supposed to be for the Dream Cruise on saturday, but today the news crew was using it to get footage of different areas since it could ford deep water. Came across a group of 90+ people stranded - somehow - in a Buddy's Pizza parlor. Something in his mind snapped and he backed the truck up to the building so they could climb in the back, cameras rolling the whole time. Probably thinking "fuck it, let's get these people out of there (it'll make a great news lead!)"

To add insult to injury, we had two small thunderstorms this afternoon...

Today, things were mostly normal. Some of the neighbors had flooded basements, but it's unclear how many people have that problem city-wide. Only reason this doesn't make the national news is people can get around town for the most part, but the traffic is heavier than normal due to all the cars detouring around flooded streets.