What a Weekend

We had a pretty exciting weekend here in Southeastern Wisconsin.

I spent about 40 minutes down in the basement Friday afternoon due to the possibility of a tornado moving into our area. Of course, right as the warning sirens sounded Olivia called to be picked up from school. She stayed after school for some much needed algebra help, the doors lock behind students when they leave after the end of the day so she wasn't able to get back in. Fortunately, she was with a friend who lived right across the street. She & her friend ran to the friend's house and headed straight to her basement. It worked out perfectly, I think. We were all safe in a basement and had Olivia not been with her friend she would have been home alone and might have been a little freaked out. After the all clear sounded I picked her up. We were home about 10 minutes when more severe thunderstorms moved in to the area. Thankfully, those did not bring the tornado warnings.

Tornado warning sirens sent us to the basement again yesterday afternoon for about an hour and a half. This time we were all home.

Thankfully, there were no tornadoes in our immediate area, but the rates at which the rain fell were down right incredible. We had more storms with heavy rain this morning and more are moving in as I type. I think most of the state is under some sort of flash flood and/or flood watch or warning tonight.

We don't live in a low lying area or near any of the rivers or creeks that are flooding in our area so the high water we have around here is minimal. We did get a bit of water in the basement. It was just coming down so fast and the ground is so saturated that it had now where to go other than into the window well and then into our basement. Most of it was soaked up by a rug I had on the floor nearby and nothing was ruined. So while it was a scary, wet weekend so far things are OK here.

Here are a couple pictures taken Friday afternoon. Believe it or not, these were taken within seconds of one another. I was standing in the middle of our deck, and to the east was the ominous, stormy sky while to the west was the beautiful blue sky with the sun shining brightly. VERY strange afternoon indeed!

I have added the rest of the pictures I took of the storms moving in Friday afternoon to flickr. You can see them here.

I hope to be able to get out tomorrow to try to capture some pictures of the high water. However, I don't know if that will be possible. It sounds like we are supposed to have more of the same for the next couple days.