Its raining, its pouring

Yesterday we got about 5-6" of rain within a few hours. I woke up early and Jared and Erin were in still in bed, so I decided its a little rain and headed out to the local hardware store to buy a $1.65 ball of twine for my garden. It was only about a 4 mile drive but it took me over an hour to find a way back that was not flooded. I was driving our Dodge Dakota and several of the roads had over 15" of standing water with full ton trucks stalled out. I think I could have kayaked our city. Our street drained well, we are on a high point of the neighborhood at a whopping 26' above sea level. It make me nervous, the last tropical storm to hit dumped upwards of 18" of rain in 24 hours. I am thinking about putting a canoe in my attic for the hurricane season, which starts in 60 days.

With that being said why do people irrigate and not harness rain water run off? Last fall we had the same type of storm (rainfall in the 4-6" range is common here) and I calculated 8 gallons/minute coming out of one of my rain spouts. I am looking at buying a few 55 gallon barrels to for rain water storage.

With all the rain we have spent a lot of time inside. Erin found the crib mattress and decided it made a nice landing pad as she launched herself off of our guest air bed. This set-up provided hours of entertainment this week and miraculously no injuries.