https://waterdata.usgs.gov/usa/nwis/uv?01513550

something to watch

I watched but it came up less than 6 feet.

https://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/uv?01477000

Florence is currently predicted to dump 10 inches on me.

This is making me anxious. Do I wait, or start working now? Maybe if I dig a foot or so deep trench around my house I can direct the water from the back yard away from my basement and toward the street. That's a lot of digging though.

Or maybe I should just start moving the shit in the basement up to the upstairs floors and let the thing fill up with water. There's a ton of stuff down there though.

10 inches is so much! I mocked Houston for building houses inside a reservoir only to be flooded by Harvey. This is payback. I'm not inside a reservoir though, I just have a very gently sloping backyard that slopes to my house, and an old cinderblock wall foundation that isn't completely water tight.

Maybe this will turn to the open ocean, right? There's time before Thursday.

Why dig a trench, the water toward the house will be on the surface and not deep. Drive some stakes and a barrier of boards should redirect the water.

Don't have any advice for you but keeping my fingers crossed that Florence decides to take off for the open ocean instead of drowning you and the rest of the East Coast. :ipray:

Well I am going to stick my head between my legs and kiss my ass goodbye. My insurance will pay the mortgage company and I will have to buy another. Every new home should have a weed smell throughout. My bike and truck are paid for and then I get to go shopping.

We supposed to get 12" of rain 2 more than VA, but any woman will tell you 2" is alot.

I'd go the sand bag route.

sandbags and start yesterday

remember you're not only redirecting water from your backyard, but from every yard upstream of your backyard. Just a diversion, please, water, won't you shift to the left a little? Give it a path. It will find a path even if it has to make one, give it an easy option to pass you by.

It wouldn't hurt to own or rent a gasoline operated sludge pump which will work even if the electricity goes out. It can be used two ways:

To avert a flooded basement, dig a trench straight across the yard with one end deeper than the other and put the intake hose at the deep end. The output hose goes off to the side of the house. This requires tending to the pump outside in a storm.

Put the basement contents up on bricks or boards and use the sludge pump to evacuate water from the basement floor. Be sure to get a pump that will raise a vertical column of water high enough and fast enough to keep pace with the storm. The pump will still have to be outside; but, it can be right next to the house and maybe just outside a door.

In either case, be sure to have enough hose lengths to reach the intake point and to discharge the water well away from the house.

ETA: Sludge pump a.k.a. slurry pump.

We're making preparations here in central NC, too. Local weather says we'll be hit Saturday, but everyone is prepping for Wednesday. I have no idea. I've got a full tank of gas, soup, camping supplies, and water. Bring it

Sand bags are as much or more work than trenching. This isn't deep water he's trying to keep out, his area won't be flooded, just heavy rain for a long time. All he has to do is divert it as it comes rolling down his slope in the back yard and the barrier probably wouldn't see water more than 3 inches deep.

So my current thought is a combination of wait and see how the forecast develops, and buy a few boxes of 3 mil thick contractor garbage bags. I figure I can fill the contractor garbage bags with a few inches of water (in place, because once they have water in them, they aren't going anywhere.) and make a water bag wall a couple inches high to divert the water to the side. I can dump the water after the storm and turn the bags inside out to dry, and save them for use as trash bags. I'm thinking I might need to brace them with boards and wooden stakes, but we will see. Bruce is right, I'm just concerned about a steady flow of 1 inch deep water coming from my back yard. There is one more property behind mine, and some of that runoff might come my way. Hard to read the topography of their property. Water might also run down their driveway to the street.

One of the models has us getting as little as 3 inches of rain, which is no big deal. No preparation needed for that. Another has us getting 10 inches, which would be an issue, the ground is completely saturated right now.

I've been getting a little water in the unfinished basement with some of these heavier thunderstorms we've been having this summer, but I've been really tweaking our downspout extension system and getting that under control.

It's remarkable how much rain we have been getting. Everything is overgrown.

Yeah, my parents got flooded in the last big storm. First time that's happened, and they've been there over 40 years.

.....I need to stop looking at everything that is saying how bad this is gonna be for the Carolinas....

I've weathered some humdingers while living down in Fayetteville. As long as you stay put during the storm and are ready for power outages, the storm should have more bark than bite for you.