Today we awoke to a thunderstorm with a heavy downpour which is not a typical January weather event in Wisconsin. I’m all for a nice thaw, especially since we were running out of room to put all the snow, but rain falling that hard can really make a mess. Knowing rain was a possibility in the coming days, my husband and I cleared the snow from the front of all the downspouts on Saturday so water wouldn’t back up toward the house and flood the basement. Now there are little lakes and rivers snaking all over the yard.
We had some landscaping work done in November which was halted abruptly by the first snowstorm, so underneath what’s left of the snow in our front yard is a gigantic area of bare soil that’s now mud. During the heaviest rain, I watched from the window as a river of that mud got larger and larger and started heading toward the edge of our new retaining wall. Thankfully the thunderstorm subsided before the mud river made it to the edge.
We’re expecting more rain later today so just now I went outside with a shovel and scoop and formed a snow wall to divert the “river bed” toward a place in our front yard where there is still grass. Hopefully the water will soak in there instead of taking off again.
The poor birds look miserable. One smart Goldfinch decided to ride out the storm under the cover of the birdfeeder.
