Living in the sunny climes of BCS is a dream – most of the time. The occasional hurricane – Hillary was our latest, and she didn’t produce much – and the monsoon-type rains and 100+ degree temps are the “dark side” to living here. We are mostly protected, and don’t get the brunt of most storms, but we still get our fair share, and the infrastructure isn’t built for large quantities of rain.
WHY? – you ask. Don’t these sorts of rains happen every summer? Yes they do – and most of the roads that lead to the bay are paved arroyos. They turn back into arroyos when it rains. Rivers of water sluice down to the bay, over side streets, sidewalks, and into some people’s houses (not ours, thankfully). There are no street drains here because the streets ARE the drains. The annual rainfall here is 6-8″, and it ALL comes in a matter of about 2 months, and usually only about 4 to 5 big storms. That means that each storm dumps A LOT of water.
Today was a non-hurricane rain storm but it was a doozy! Funny that the weather radar doesn’t seem too bad, but the yellow indicates 1.5 to 2 inches of water – and it is concentrated in a very small amount of space and time.
This was our “back yard” today. The pool water is nearing the lip of the pool, and the pool deck. That is up about 4″ from where it was this morning – before the storm. I swam this morning and all was well, then came the rain. We had to do an emergency release of water during the rainstorm to prevent the pool deck from flooding. The pool takes on more water than you’d expect, because we have multiple drain spouts from the roof levels that release onto the pool deck, and run into the pool. The deck drains are easily inundated, and the runoff ends up in the pool. And this is since we had the whole pool deck re-leveled to keep water away from the house. <SIGH>
And still, I love living here. I’m just learning new life skills. Right? 😅