Rain, rain go away!
It's four o'clock in the morning and it has been raining all night long.
We haven't had that much rain tonight, but we had 2-3 inches over the weekend, and that did serve to swell the Chicago River. It wasn't anywhere close to the flooding of September, but the river was out of its banks and the park a block west of our home was flooded. There are "flood advisories" and "flash flood warnings" all over the Midwest in anticipation of new rains tonight. I just noticed that a "wind advisory" has been added as well.
I can't sleep when it rains. I logon to the computer and watch the radar, checking out the basement and the street every half an hour or so. When the radar shows that the majority of the rain has passed and we're again in the green on the Weather Underground radar, I can finally rest.
That's just about where we are right now. The radar shows that those of us who are north of the city are "in the green" for now, while those south and southwest are still experiencing quite a bit of rain. Some of those areas had serious flooding over the weekend and some of the streams and rivers from the south and southwestern areas of the metro area were already at "moderate" flooding.
A check of our still-unfinished basement confirms that it is bone dry. I look out our front windows to the river and I see another sleepless soul walking over the bridge with an umbrella. This is a good thing... not that that person is also up at 4 in the morning looking at the river... but that he or she can walk that river path up to the bridge. The path, the picture at the top of my blog, was underwater last September. We've only received a half an inch of rain around here. Now we just have to wait until tomorrow; there's supposed to be more rain, and we'll see how much rain comes down from the river branches and the Skokie lagoons up north. We're not out of the woods yet, but I think I can sleep. For all of two or three hours.
Will I ever sleep through a rain again? That's a good question.
