Fast-moving thunderstorms that dump a lot of rain in a very short time aren’t unusual during the warmer months in Utah, but the storm that hit Saturday night was exceptional even for a “summer monsoon,” as my mother has always called them. Have a look at this:
My house is just down the street from the spot where much of that footage was captured. As it happens, I wasn’t home during the storm, but my lovely Anne was, and she tells me that the lawn, sidewalk, and street all vanished within minutes beneath a small lake. She also tells me water was actually rolling up the driveway from the street. But these were only interesting natural phenomena, passing curiosities gone almost as soon as they were observed. The real problem was a blocked downspout on the edge of our roof, which caused water to overtop the brim of the rain gutters and cascade down in a four-foot wide sheet… straight into the window well of our basement bedroom.
The debris line left behind the next morning suggests the water rose to about six inches deep in the window well. I like to imagine it probably looked something like this:
Fortunately, our experience wasn’t as catastrophic as Captain Smith’s final moments in Titanic — the window did not implode in a spectacular manner — but the water got in anyhow, and, to finally get to the damn point, we’ve got to replace the carpet in our master bedroom. Our cozy, wall-to-wall, luxurious shag carpet, which my late Hannibal-cat loved to sharpen his claws in, which felt so warm and soft and cushy beneath my bare toes, just installed about two and a half years ago. Anne and I and my dad spent much of yesterday slicing it and the water-logged pad beneath into strips and hauling them upstairs in dripping, heavy bundles bound for the trash bins. To add insult to injury, I’d already spent much of Saturday hunched over in our shower, scouring away hard-water scales, so by the time I dropped into bed last night, I was so tired and sore I could barely move.
It’ll take probably a week for the concrete to dry out, and then we’ll have to source new carpet and installers… and Anne no longer works in the floor-covering industry, which was such a big help to us when we first finished that room…
Yeah, like I said… I’ve had better weekends.
It could’ve been worse, of course. I know other people in the general area who had several inches of standing water in their basements. We don’t even have any damage to the walls. But still… I find the whole situation deeply disheartening. What is it about being an adult that just about the time you feel like you’re getting ahead, paying off some bills, and finally seeing some goals coming within your reach, some bullshit thing like this knocks you back a rung or two?
