And although Rollingwood's Stage 2 drought restrictions are still in effect, we had at least 7 hours of rain over the weekend, and a flood in part of our backyard, after an old French drain failed (we think) and spilled a stream of water from the higher streets behind us down the embankment in the back yard. Fortunately our pool design was a good one, and the water just went around it. Jessica and I spent more than 2 hours channeling it into the Berm (or overflow creek) at the back of our house. We started out innocently enough, arranging rocks and diverting the small flood stream away from the patio, but escalated into major excavations as I ended up digging a 8ft long channel from the back of the pool to the berm, so that the water would flow away safely. It stopped raining in after an hour or so, but the forecast was for more the next day, and I didn't want to take any chances. Rollingwood has no storm sewers and its public works dept. acts as though we're all living on the frontier (except regarding fences) so I do not expect them to take any responsibility for flood control.
And if that wasn't enough adventure, it rained so much that the pool level rose almost to overflowing, and we actually had to DRAIN it for about 15 minutes. (Are you getting the irony here?) We had to unravel a flat coiled hose connected to a waste valve and stretch it out towards the back of the yard, turn off the filter pump and basically throw it into reverse. And the water sprayed out over the already sodden grass until the level in the pool had dropped about an inch and a half.
Parts of Williamson Co., north of Austin, got 7 inches of rain on Saturday. We got over at least 3-inches, they said, not counting our self-inflicted bit.
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