Waiting for the rain to stop

An interesting night; the power went off at 1:30 AM, and our sump pump shut off (they blew a transformer and substation in Canmore). I worked with my neighbour to get their generator running, and in that half half hour, 2" of water had built up in the basement. Plug in, and we were back in business. The power returned at 3:30 AM.

Since then, all has been quiet, with the water coming in...

Three hoses help moving the water across to the sump pump

...flowing across the house to the sump...

Little rapids in a doorway. 1" of water here.

...and then pumped out. The system's the same. My pump pumps 45 seconds, does nothing for 45 seconds, and then pumps again. Watch this video to see how much water it really is.

With the power on, and everything stable, there's really not much we can do. We could sweep water, but there's not much point because the water's flowing out as fast as its coming in. Letting it flow is less work and, since the water level is lower than at yesterday's peaks, causes no incremental damage. So we let the pump do its thing.

We went for a short walk in the rain (yes, it's still raining). In fact, it's quite pretty with notable new snow up on the mountain tops.

Mountains peek through the clouds 

New snow on Mt. Rundle

Just west of us, a creek is flowing through one of the hotel properties down on the frontage road.

That's pavement that the water cut through 

The new creek higher up

There is just a whole lot of water in the Bow River. We saw extensive flooding of the river valley.

The river. The TransCanada in the foreground

Every road and every bridge over a creek or river around here is closed or damaged. The aerial photos are awesome.

It's clearing up, finally. As I type this, the sun is out and the sky is blue, and for the first time in 48 hrs, it's not raining (but the radar says there's a thunderstorm about to hit).

Until the water stops coming into the basement, there's little we can do. When it stops, we'll have a bunch of cleanup to do.