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CoolHandMike

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Posts posted by CoolHandMike

    Philly Area Banter

    in Philadelphia Region

    Posted

    I was going to post this on the obs thread but since I went off on such a huge tangent, I figured it would be better to post here.

     

    Some beautiful asperitus clouds today in my neck of the woods today. Sadly I did not think to capture pics. (I will forever refer to them as Undulatus Asperitus.)

    Regarding flooding... I've lived here for 3.5 years, and before last July's eleven inches of rain in three days, we'd get a hard rain, and the dry sump well in my house would remain bone dry throughout. There wasn't even a sump installed when we bought it! It was literally just a 2' deep pit in my basement with gravel at the bottom. Even during the 5" we received when the Skook flooded in August of '21 it remained dry. Now though, anything over an inch of precip, and my basement would flood if I hadn't installed a pump last year (and the battery backup pump).

    What I don't yet understand (totally expected, given my rather poor understanding of hydrogeology, despite majoring in geoscience) is how my local subterranean hydro has changed so much just from one event. I live almost on top of a low rise, in an albeit, well-developed suburb. Now that I think of it, the local "water authority" (yes, they call themselves that--the regular "municipal authority" has actually taken pains to explain how the two are separate--gotta love local politics) has been severely mismanaged, and has only recently been taken to task for overall poor maintenance of the supply system, shifting blame of stormwater handling to the municipality.

    Long story short, we've had at least three water main breaks here in the past several years, the last one occurring during that July flooding event. The water authority blamed the municipality for poor maintenance of the drainage system, which caused excessive erosion which knocked out the water main. But the mains are ~100 years old, and proper maintenance might have prevented the break despite the flooding/erosion. And there's also the question of millions of dollars in some kind of literal "rainy-day fund" that the water authority had just been kind of sitting on?

    The whole thing smacks of corruption at the local level, and finally last year, with the threat of dissolution BY the municipality, the water authority was forced to take on members of our local council on their board. There've been no water main breaks since, and I've seen more local maintenance occurring in the area, so... yay?

    But all of that still doesn't explain why my (nearly) hilltop basement wants to flood now with anything nearing an inch of rain when it's been bone dry for the majority of the past 3.5 years. (And for the ~30 years prior, as there was absolutely zero evidence of any kind of flooding or dampness in the unfinished basement when we bought the house in 2020.)

    Groundwater flow continues to mystify.

     

    As an aside, can you believe at least two families before ours owned this house with a completely unfinished basement and did absolutely nothing at all with it??? The mind boggles. That's prime woodshop territory! It also now includes a walled-off pantry, a seedling nursery area, and walled-off storage area for all of the regular house stuff. I just refuse to accept that my "hilltop" basement could simply flood at any moment, but here we are.

    • Weenie 1

    2/13 rain to snow event

    in Philadelphia Region

    Posted

    32 minutes ago, LVLion77 said:


    It really does feel warm up here. 41.5 f and dew of 33.2f (near Allentown.) It may be the rare significant accumulation when the air temp is 33-34 F.


    .

    41.9 and DP 38.6 here now. Light drizzle. Really hoping for something awesome, but not holding my breath.

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