“Atmospheric rivers are relatively long, narrow regions in the atmosphere – like rivers in the sky – that transport most of the water vapor outside of the tropics. These columns of vapor move with the weather, carrying an amount of water vapor roughly equivalent to the average flow of water at the mouth of the Mississippi River. When the atmospheric rivers make landfall, they often release this water vapor in the form of rain or snow.”

So, it’s basically a river in the sky, and of course what goes up, must come down, right? When one of these sky rivers comes our way, we know to be ready for wind and rain, and lots of both. Last year we had quite a few (the wind was scary even for me who likes the crazy wind), and this plus the large amount of snow we got last year helped our drought immensely. This year, eh, not so much. We had rain in November I think, and hardly any snow.

Enter March! We’ve had a few small bouts of snow, but last weekend, we woke up to a foot-plus of the fluffy white stuff. Finally! And then it melted- fast. Usually the snow here melts super slow, but this year it’s as if we were back in TN and it melts almost as fast as it accumulated. So now the ground was completely saturated and the creek was flowing, and then the sky river moved in. I woke up Thursday to this:

As the kids would say, “R.I.P. driveway.” There are three pipes running under driveway right here, but we were unable to unclog the third. Still, good grief. I’d say it’s about 4 ft deep in the middle, and it was MOVING. Needless to say, the driveway is in horrible shape. On the plus side, though, the ground is so rocky here that only parts of the driveway are mush, other parts are very rocky, though not always small rocks.

To make a long story short, we have some pretty big drainage issues. We need to figure out these issues and then fix the driveway. We also need to come up with a plan for the culverts down along the road, but that is going to involve working with the neighborhood association, because they need to fix culverts and pipes on their end. Sadly, I don’t see that happening anytime soon, because since this past storm has done quite a bit of damage, they’ve already got their work cut out for them during the dry season.

My plans for the side yard include a ditch to divert the water around the house and into the creek, but that doesn’t solve all of our issues. I am, however, looking forward to not having a sizeable lake where I usually take the dogs out…