stays mainly in the flood plain.
We had a lot of water in the street last night when I was driving home, partly because of the speed humps that the city thinks slow down traffic on our street and partly because our storm sewers just don’t have the capacity to slough off that much water that quickly. What I wanted to see when I got home was how much water we had in the swale in the back yard, which can come halfway up to the house when it really gets bad (I mind a deluge in 1977 in which we had water halfway up the front yard and the street completely flooded). At any rate, the back yard river was pretty much down to about a four-foot wide stream by the time I got home, which means it didn’t really fill up that badly.*
However.
On the way home I normally drive past Highland Country Club. And when I got to 52nd and Grandview and looked out onto the fairway, what I saw was a damn good imitation of a river. As I drove up Grandview I saw that the fairways were absolutely full of water. When I got north of Kessler, the road was partly flooded and many yards had water in them.
Which means that all the work that was done down there over the past five years separating out the storm and sanitary sewers, and improving the storm sewers so the neighborhood actually drained, went pretty much for nought, because I honestly did not see any difference between the flooding they used to get after a rain like that and the flooding they got last night.
If I lived down there, I would be PISSED.
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* It’s nights like last night that make me very glad we don’t have a basement, as much as I often wish we did.