Snow & Rain

 

Well, my day has pretty much been defined by the weather.  We had a weird storm come through.  It started out last night with some snow.  It was not a bad storm, by any means.  The drive home from work at 8:00 pm was a little challenging, because just enough had fallen to make the roads a little slick, but we had only gotten about 4 inches by the time I got up in the morning.  By that time, it had also made the change over to rain.

We were lucky in that it wasn't doing anything when we got up so we were able to go right out and shovel without having to fight against the rain.  It went pretty smoothly since it was light snow with just a litte bit of crustiness on top.

The real fun of the rain hit when I got to work.  By that point, the rain was really coming down.  The good thing is that it was quickly washing away the storm.  The bad thing is that the library was not up to the challenge of the onslaught.

I was sitting at the Reference Desk working away when a parton came over to point out that we had some water dripping from the ceiling.  This is definitely not a new thing, but we had the roof fixed so it wasn't supposed to happen any more.  I quickly notified the director and set to work with the emergency supplies to catch the falling water.  While I was going downstairs to the furnace room to get the supplies, I passed through the room where they were doing their storytime.  It turns out that they were having their own little water crisis.

The water was seaping in throught the wall of the basement. It seemed I was coming through just in time because it meant they could get the wet/dry vac and pigs to clean everything up and barricade the wall.  It all worked out OK.

When I went back upstairs, I got everything coordinated pretty quickly.  I did notice that water was starting to pool a little bit on top of the plastic panel for the ceiling light.  I was worried tha the panel was going to break and hurt someone so I went to get the ladder so I could go up and take the panel down. Well, in the process of getting it down, it tipped, dumping all the water over my hed and shoulders. It was so funny!  Everyone was teasing me about having a second shower.

Fortunately, the rain started to slow down shortly later so the leaks slowed down.  We had a few other ceiling leaks kick in, but nothing too serious.

One cool thing is that a number of people pointed out that they thought it showed that we really had a need for a new building.  We are going to have a bond request on the ballot in the fall in the hopes of raising the necessary funds to build the new library.  I guess leaky roofs and seaping walls help bring about support.

Well, the rain seems to be done for now.  We are under all sorts of warnings for flooding rivers now, though.  Fortunately, we are not too clse to any rivers so it should not effect us directly, but I hope they are panicking without need. That would be nice.