Flash Floods

It's rainy season in La Crosse. Although Wisconsin doesn't have an official rainy season, it has been raining more than the rainy seasons I experienced in Korea. I have to wait one more week to see if it matches the Japanese rainy season.

We experienced our first flash flood since the Karasu-gawa River washed out the floodplains in Takasaki back in the summer of 2000. It seems our Minnesota neighbors got it worse with mudslides and a few deaths. Over here in La Crosse, the downtown had flooded intersections and our apartment basement had waterfalls on the north wall. That has unsettled some of us new residents. We are aware that construction isn't finished yet. But should the foundation be the first thing to complete?

Nothing was traumatic, but we experienced a strange partial power outage in our apartment building. It seemed like only 1/3 of the power went out. Our 1/3 of the hallway was completely black, but 2/3 of our apartment was out. Curiously, we had electricity for our refrigerator, our TV/cable/DVD player, and half of our bedroom. The rest of the apartment was out, including our phone service. Luckily we just powered up our brand new cellphones.

The power went out at around 10pm yesterday and was restored at 10am today. When it went out, the lights flickered for a minute before completely going off. That was a first for me. Usually they just go completely out instead of a minute of deciding if it should stay on or not.

So according to our neighbor, the basement was apparently flooded overnight. I checked out this morning and saw most of it dry but the NW corner was still very wet with a little fountain coming out the north wall. The basement hasn't been inspected yet, so no cars have been allowed to park down there and nobody can use the storage facilities yet. Only the media center is open for use and that was not flooded at all.

The forecast is the same for today with flash flood watches all day. But the storm has apparently moved south for the time being. Thunderstorms are forecasted through Friday, so we haven't seen the last of this fun weather. It's not like Hurricane Dean is going to come up here.