They're not kidding about that "flash" thing

I was just getting ready to go to a meeting when my phone starting shrieking in a way I'd never heard before. "Flash flood warning," it told me, but I dismissed the threat. Walking from one end of my building to another isn't going to expose me to any flash-flood danger, and I wasn't worried about my creek back home because it wasn't anywhere near flood stage when I left the house this morning. Sure, we've had rain on and off all morning, but it was a light rain and not the sort of Noachic deluge that generally leads to flooding.

Half an hour later I got back from my meeting to find that my son had sent photos of our driveway: in the course of just 30 minutes, the creek rose enough to cover our driveway on both sides of the bridge and to creep up into the meadow and cover the lower garden plot (which was just plowed last week). The bridge was still above water, but just barely.

My son was supposed to work today but he's not getting across that bridge any time soon even if the water goes down quickly, because generally when swift flood waters cover that part of the driveway, they wash out a lot of gravel on either side of the bridge, making it uneven or even impassible. And I'll face the same problem when I try to get home later on, unless we can get our new gravel guy to come out with a load for patching.

I didn't bring a change of clothes today since the flood gave me so little advance warning, so I may be sleeping in my gym clothes on someone's sofa tonight. Meanwhile, it's still raining.

Another beautiful day in the mid-Ohio valley!