We did some cleaning up today, but there's a lot left to do. The upright piano was leaning on a piece of old stereo equipment, like a tape player, that had managed to stand on its end. We couldn't lift the piano, so we just tied a rope to it and pulled so it fell flat. At least it won't kill a cat this way. Lynn had a bag of old books on top of the piano, and the bag has handles. As the piano floated around during the flood the bag's handles hooked on something, so the bag was left hanging and the books are dry. The beer bottles I collect for homebrew are all covered inside and out with silt. I could clean them, or recycle them and accumulate more by buying beer. Hmm.

9:23 AM

Oh, heck. I'll put in a few more posts.


The water's only calf-deep now, stuff has floated all over. I went downstairs. The water line on the wall is over 4 ft (> 1.2 m) deep. Our phone is out. The pink beer is history, since the carboy holding it broke in half. The downstairs refrigerator (the one with the beer) is lying on it's front with the door open. There was a worthless piano downstairs that came with the house. It's now leaning precariously against something. There is silt covering almost everything. I think we'll just use a hose to rinse it off. The garage door floated up, and some things are lying in the driveway. I'll pick those up first, so we have somewhere to park.

10:00 PM

It's still outside, and we're supposed to get days of quiet weather, highs in the upper 70's to lower 80's. The water in the downstairs (and outside!) is still very high, but slowly dropping. There's a lot of clean-up work ahead, though a lot of stuff is ruined, so we can just toss it. It's not clear if my work is open tomorrow. In any case, unless something dramatic happens I think I'll stop posting here. Goodnight!

5:39 PM

Yea! The water level is definitely going down, though not much yet. It's windier now than it has been. As Lynn said, a tree fell across the stream, into a neighbor's yard. Odd that the forecast has the windspeed steadily decreasing, and it hasn't worked out that way.

3:29 PM

We're so grateful that we still have power and water. Not hot water, mind you. The water heater is at least partly submerged, and so we'll have to replace it. Along with the washer, dryer, and possibly the furnace.

There hasn't been much rain since the last entry, which is as the weather service predicted. It's pretty breezy and pleasantly cool. The township declared a state of emergency last night at midnight, but most people would not have heard of it.

Note the water above the switches. We're pretty sure that it has crested.

So this is likely the deepest it'll get:

The front of the house:

The last photo will mean something mainly to those who have been here.

12:07 PM

The water's a little deeper. In previous pictures down our stairwell, you can see a light switch plate on the wall. The water's at the bottom edge of that, now. It's actually nice outside, breezy and cool. The sun's trying to come out, though I think it won't succeed today.

10 AM

Lynn's worried that we'll have to evacuate, with the three cats, two rabbits, and a parakeet. It is her personality to think of what could happen and prepare for it. It's a constructive form of pessimism,  I suppose. I prefer to think that the water is cresting and will start down soon. Perhaps I'm in denial, but I think there's good reason to believe it. The local Assunpink creek (runs through Trenton) is cresting.

9:30 AM or so

The rain has slowed to sprinkles, and the wind never did get terribly strong here. It may yet pick up, but the forecast says no. The water in the basement is still rising slowly.

For newscasters, this has got to be a little like the infamous Phillies-Padres 1993 double-header that ended at 4:40 AM because of several rain delays. The announcers had to keep talking for hours. (FYI, Mitch Williams, the Phillies closer, knocked in the winning run in the 10th inning of the second game. The Padres won the first game.)

Caitlin volunteered to do some wading in the basement and save some things. I'm not sure this was so bright, but she's out now.

The basement from the stairs:

The water is above the window sill.

The front of the house:

7:06 AM

The water's about one step deeper than in the last photo. It's about the level of the windows downstairs. We didn't lift things that high, so a lot of books and other things are being soaked. Tony stayed up late, and moved our cars further up the driveway to keep them out of the water.

4:42 AM

Pretty deep. Likely to get deeper.

Sunday, 1:45 AM

I woke up. The wind and rain have actually decreased, but the water is just a few inches below our downstairs floor level.

According to the weather service we're in a little gap in the activity. It doesn't have an eye anymore, I think.

9:48 PM

Raining quite hard. Gutters a bit overwhelmed.

7:44 PM

The rain got kind of heavy at about 7. Definitely breezy, not quite windy yet.

6:11 PM

Moderate rain. A little breeze. Domino's pizza for dinner. They did improve it, but it's still not my favorite. It will be acceptable left overs if the power is out.

3:40 PM

The picking up of the downstairs is pretty much done. It has started raining, probably an hour or so ago, but it's not raining hard. It's getting a little breezy.

View of backyard:

It may be hard to see, but the stream is very low.

Here's the stairwell, which I show because I'm assuming a later picture will show deep water here:

11:18 AM

It’s cloudy, but there’s just a little breeze and the sun has threatened to come out. We’ve moved much of the stuff on the floor and low shelves downstairs, and moved it to higher shelves or upstairs. I’ve made sure that my larger brewing vessels are open so they’ll just fill with water, rather than float around. The stream in the backyard is very low, so apparently they’ve closed the mill dam. Nice, at least for us.