so, we made it back home tuesday evening, after our quick trip down south. as it turns out little a-town, and our house, was in the path of quite a storm starting about midnight monday and on into the wee hours of tuesday morning. although no tornado was actually spotted, the sirens went off on 3-4 different occasions and for what seemed like hours at a time according to those who live directly under one of the signals. mostly rain and a little hail, the paper reported that sw a-town where i live, got as much as 4 inches of rain. i believe it because i emptied at least that much from my rain gauge! mcdonald's lake that i've mentioned before, is out of it's banks and the water is blocking the sidewalk around it's perimeter in places. the good news is that it handled a bunch of rain that fell in a very short time. runoff flows into it from the north, south, east and west. impressive! the holding pool at the end of our alley also did it's job exceptionally well. when we came in about 7;30 p.m. tuesday evening 95% of the runoff had already done just that-- run off. there was still some water standing in pools but the runoff had already been reduced to a trickle. while i would have liked to have been here to witness all the rain, i feel confident that nothing short of the great flood will put our humble home at risk for flooding. water. water, water-- water everywhwere. let the mosquito season begin. aio