I'll be busy today, it seems.

[MineralMan]

For a change, though, it will have nothing to do with politics or COVID-19.

Yesterday, a pop-up thunderstorm cell sat over my neighborhood in St. Paul, MN for over an hour. Torrential rain, lightning, 50+ MPH wind - the whole works. Very dramatic weather, to be sure.

Even with clear gutters, my weather system couldn't keep up with the deluge, which dropped about 4" of rain on my place. The basement window wells filled up, so water soaked the carpeting in my basement. Based on past experience, my shop vac will get about four days of work, off and on, vacuuming up that water. The basement sump pump is running every couple of minutes, and probably will for a few days.

Two big branches fell off our big silver maple in the front yard, so those have to be cut up and loaded into the Ford Ranger to go to the green waste yard. I could do without that labor, too. The largest one is about 6" in diameter at its base. I'll have to bring the chainsaw out of hibernation to deal with those.

Oddly, I'm not really upset by this. It's a sort of normal sort of bad thing to happen. It's not Donald Trump doing some stupid harmful thing. It's not catching the coronavirus. Nobody's hurt. Nobody died. It's just some unexpected work I have to do.

It's almost a relief, really.

[Jersey Devil]

1. Window wells

Had that problem in my home and solved it with clear plastic covers for the window wells. Cheap and efficient fix that saved me a lot of work after very heavy rains.

[MineralMan]

3. Yeah. The metal surrounds for the window

wells were not installed properly over 60 years ago. They aren't attached to the concrete block foundation or sealed to it. So, the water comes into them from the sides. Fixing that would be a major, major job that would involve excavating all six of them and reinstalling them properly. I doubt I'll ever do that.

They have plastic covers, which do pretty well most of the time. Except when we have a cloudburst that overloads the gutter system and lets water pool around them. Yuck.

[niyad]

2. However inconvenient, time-consuming and tiring, it is a reminder that there IS life outside

trumpistan's bizarro, nightmare world.

Be safe and well, and hope things return to normal soon

[MineralMan]

4. Exactly.

It's not a super big deal. Just inconvenient. At almost 75 years of age, I have to pace myself for such things, but I'm fortunate to be able to do them still.