Partings...

Bill, my oldest, left for his new job in D.C. this morning. He and Laura came to dinner Thursday night here to say goodbye to the grandkids and his brother and Noel. Bill was extremely tired and forgot some of the things from here he was going to take, so we gathered them to take to him last evening.

One of the worst driving experiences I've ever had...I knew heavy rain was coming and had Rain-X'd the windshield in preparation for it. 4 inches we were supposed to get on top of the inch or so the day before. As we were getting ready to leave tornado warnings went out for the county south of us, with one on the ground tracking into Missouri. When we got about 5 minutes west of our house on the interstate I could hear the sirens over the rain, over the radio, over everything at 70 mph.! The radio announced tornado warnings for us, but not their location.

John was on his way to our house to pick up the leftover lasagna from the family dinner Thursday night; Dottie called him to tell him he might want to wait a bit. He checked his TV and found out they were tracking a funnel that was coming out of Bonner Springs towards I-70 and K-7...I was a half mile east of there at that moment.

I was concentrating on staying on the road at that point, in the rush hour traffic with the rain pouring down. I saw a lowering off to my left at one point, but no rotation. Dottie thought she saw a funnel off to our north about the same time.

We got to Lawrence, stopping to buy 3 new maps to send with Bill along with the Yahoo maps directions he had asked me to print. We had dinner with them and helped them bag some of the things he was taking and get them in the car tonight so he had less to do this morning, then drove home through an even heavier downpour.

No phone calls this morning, and if he's driving I'm not going to bother him as he'll be running through the rain almost all day today.

So my fingers are crossed...

Hopefully he'll be running ahead of the remnants of Ike tomorrow, as they're predicting tornadoes all the way up through Ohio, which is where we're hoping he'll be when he stops for the night tonight. If he makes that then he should be ahead of it tomorrow!

I've been rotating through the channels this morning, watching the weather and seeing the reports from Texas...I hope everyone down there is OK!

May the weekend be kind to each of you!

alan
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4PM edit...

The good-

I've heard from Bill twice today, once just after noon when he called to ask if he should use his new (and first ever) cell phone to call in an SUV on it's roof in the median. He was just driving into the rain then and decided he really needed to concentrate. He called later when he was stopped for gas about 100 miles from St. Louis.

The bad-

I took the dog out earlier and walked the yard to check for damage, only finding one limb down. Brought her in and went downstairs; the leak in the stairwell had stopped (probably need to replace a piece of plastic I buried against that wall years ago). The sump was keeping up...

Went to turn on a light and get ready to spend some time working out, and my pretty checkerboard of mats felt wet...took another step and they went "squish". So I've spent my afternoon moving things, pulling them up and standing them on edge to dry and using my shop-vac to pick up the water. It's not coming in the upper part of the wall where it used to (plastic sheeting there several years ago, as well as in the bottom of the "flowerbox", and between it and the driveway). It didn't come in where the cap blocks are separated from the lower wall...

It's coming in one cinder block from the very bottom, right above the floor. Meaning the 8" or so of rain we've had in the last 36 hours has soaked down through the driveway and the lateral Dad buried behind that wall 49 years ago isn't picking it up...

It's not much, and I'll keep vacuuming it up every couple of hours 'til it stops. The dehumidifier and the fan I use for working out already have part of it starting to dry. I'm so much better off than I was when we first moved in (I'd have had 4" or so to squeegee into the sump) and I know those south of me are faring far worse!

The ugly-

It's raining again...the northernmost outer bands of Ike are visiting...

:o)

alan