If it had just been ten degrees colder this week, we'd be shoveling our way through a couple feet of snow. Instead we're dealing with several inches of rain and substantial flooding.

On our drive to drama and ballet today we were amazed to see whole acres on either side of the road completely underwater, the crowns of small trees barely poking up above the muddy brown lakes. Some of this land had recently been cleared and graded for the building of yet another strip mall, and it was easy to see that maybe altering the land that drastically was not such a good idea. This is the worst flooding I've seen since we moved out here six years ago. That land is low, with streams cutting through it and therefore prone to flooding, but this was an enormous amount of water. I can only imagine what the area looked like in '93. Fortunately our house is on high ground, but our backyard now sports a creek where the runoff comes down the hill from our neighbor's yard. Tonight the temperature is supposed to drop just enough that we end up with some snow flurries before this is all over with, but we've got more rain forecast for next week. Hopefully the water will go down a little before we get more on top of it.