When it snows, and then rains....

After Christmas, we had a brief break in storms and then it all hit again on New Years and the day after. The snow was nearing our front windows and had buried our front porch yet again. The pic below is of the front of the house. I couldn't get the front door open more than a couple of inches to fit my camera lens thru.
The UPS truck came with our belated Christmas presents (thanks west coast family!!), and the driver told us not to try to go anywhere. The roads were that horrible!
I looked out the back door while eating breakfast and noticed that our little birch tree had lost a limb - just snapped right off under the heavy snow. My attitude said - leave it there 'til the snow goes away and then survey all the damage in the yard and do some serious cleaning up.
Andy's attitude said - hey! check this out! another tree!
Well this storm decided to trade in the snow for some serious rain. 'The rains came down and floods came up', literally. Creeks and rivers all over were overflowing, including our little Four Mile Creek in Viola.
This is the neighbor's house on the corner (raised enough above the ground to escape serious damage), and it was our first sign on our way to work that the waters were high.
The scene got Engineer Andy pretty excited - he actually thinks floods are cool! We had to turn around and go back to the house for the camera to document it.
And, the pic above is Four Mile Creek, at the culvert. It looks more like a pond, than a creek. Last winter, at about this time, I was climbing down into the creek to dig out our trash cans that had blown across the street in the night. There wasn't more than a foot or so of water in it then.
And, a good sign: the empty field across the street. The standing water could have meant trouble, but check out the snow dam built up over the last few weeks by the snow plow and Andy on the borrowed four-wheeler! The water would have to work hard to get thru that and across the street to our front door.
However, by late afternoon the rains had stopped and water slowly receded back to the creek. We haven't got much precipitation since (an inch or so of slush 2 nights ago is all), and the snow is disappearing without more flooding.

To all of you on the west coast, I hope you're drying out ok...


Spring time? Anyone?