Maybe I'll start with the worst of it. I told you we've had lots of rain. Let me clarify. We had over 7 inches of rain in the month of April. That's about 5 inches over the average. We had above average snowfall this winter that melted all month. Lake Champlain has risen to 102.8 feet - flood stage is 100 feet.
Do you see the writing on the wall?
We had a huge thunderstorm and soaking rains on Tuesday night...Wednesday we woke up to this.
(This picture was actually taken after a bit of clean up.)
Yuck.
5 days later and it looks like this. Matt tossed all of the bookshelves and that carpet went to the dump right away.
The water is still pouring in.
Ew. Yes - that's mold. More on that later. Unfortunately, when we removed the built-in shelving we discovered that the basement wall bows out. Awesome. There's a possibility it's a big deal and a possibility that it isn't according to our builder (thank goodness we have him). The danger is that our foundation on that side might not be secure. He thinks he can brace it and prevent any further movement (for a price of course).
Back to the basement. We squeegee about every 2 or 3 hours and run the dehumidifier 24/7. That's about all we can do until things dry up around here. We aren't alone. Our neighbors tell us this is the first time EVER their basements have flooded. Great. Figures it'd fall a few weeks after we bought this house. I'm thankful we weren't storing much down there as we were working on the mold issue already.
We were hoping to escape to the lake house a bit this week as construction gets underway, but looks like that might not happen.
Here's the road out to the camp under about 2 feet of water.
The only way we're getting out there is by boat. I'm trying not to get discouraged. There are lots of houses in our little neighborhood that have water inside at this point and my heart goes out to those families as there's nothing they can do until the waters go down. I'm saying my prayers things aren't as bad as they seem.
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