The Wet Week that Was

There aren't really words to describe what this last week has been like. If you've been watching the news, you know that we got epic amounts of rain for about seven days. The worst of it was Sunday night into Monday. Last Sunday, we had a tremendous thunderstorm come through in the middle of the night. It woke all of us up (even Andrew, who usually sleeps through anything), and it stormed and POURED for close to two hours. I just lay in bed worrying about the fact that it was a Sunday night which meant that the next day was Monday, and I was going to have to make it through the day on very little sleep. I never imagined what was going on outside.



Here's what was happening while we slept.

(Pictures courtesy of the ajc)

Those buses are parked about a half mile from my house at Parkview High School. There's a creek that runs right next to where the buses are parked, and the water rose to about 7 or 8 feet overnight. And we didn't even get the worst of the flooding. Over on the west side of Atlanta, entire neighborhoods were under water. In some places, you could only see the roofs of the two story houses. Six Flags had many of their roller coasters under water. The pictures on the news were just surreal. You see stories like that in other places, but to realize it's happening to people right where you live is very disconcerting. An elementary school in Cobb County, Clarkdale Elementary, was completely submerged. Those students had to evacuate on Monday as water starting pouring in. Our school was cancelled on both Monday and Tuesday because it wasn't safe to drive on the roads. People were getting swept off of the roads as they tried to drive through the water. It was like nothing I had ever experienced.

Thankfully, our house stayed dry. Our house is set up on a rise, and the water flowed down the lawn and into the neighbor's. During the worst of the rain on Monday afternoon, it was pooling quite a bit just past our neighbor's house, but it didn't get up very high. We don't have basements on our road, and I've never been happier about that. I spent Wednesday back at school just looking around my classroom and realizing how thankful I was that it was still there. I can't imagine as a teacher, or a student, losing absolutely everything in your classroom. Many of those students also lost everything in their homes as well. The thought of it is overwhelming.

Our only problems have been with our phone and internet service. The phone was out Monday, (I'm beginning to think something got hit by lightning) and the internet went out completely on Tuesday. I was finally able to get a hold of someone on Thursday, and everything should be up and running no later than Tuesday. A lot of the roads around us are closed as a creek that meanders around our area washed out or weakened many of the bridges that cross it. It's made getting around a little interesting. Matthew's soccer field (which sits across the street from where those buses were parked) suffered some severe damage, but they are hoping to get everything back up and running by next week. They lost a few of their soccer goals and most of the fence, and in some places the ground washed away, but I drove by there today, and there were people out getting it cleaned up. Unfortunately, it's pouring right now, as we are expecting another 1 to 2 inches of rain today. Hopefully, the ground has dried enough to handle it.