We Made It Through, But...

The rain ended early this morning, and we made it through the night with a dry basement.  The trenches and new drains that CG had put in held up to the onslaught of water.  The only blip we had here was that a skunk had taken refuge in our garage.  Don't ask me how it got in.  Unfortunately not everyone here was as lucky as we were.  Our friend's parents' home early this morning had 4 feet of water in the basement and the water was still rising.  That would be floating drywall that they had been planning on using to finish off the basement.

This is the bridge around the corner from their home this morning.  For those who don't live near water, the rivers and creeks will continue to rise for up to a day beyond when it stops raining. 

All that water that came down on the hills is still running down to the creeks and rivers, swelling them even further.  That's why even though it hadn't rained all day, the river wouldn't crest until tonight.  All the driveways on my street looked like this all day long - a river of water coming down off the hill.

You can see all the cars submerged in the Walmart plaza.

There are hundreds of homes between this plaza and the river.  Homes that are all seeing at least some flooding.

I spent part of my day driving around, trying to check on friends in lower lying areas to help out any way that I could. The task was made more difficult, because so many of the roadways had been closed.  The parkway that connects Vestal(my town) to Owego(the next town over.)

Owego was particularly hard hit, seeing over 10" of rain.  The Owego Elementary School will take weeks to recover.

An aerial view of Owego.

  My cousin's home was in an island type section of Johnson City.  Her home stayed dry, but there was flooding to the south, west, north, and east of her.

Thanks for popping in and checking on our wet, wet area.  Please keep this area in your thoughts and prayers tonight.