After the lightning comes the flood

Monday evening we finished our work and were enjoying a celebatory dinner when the storm struck. The sky was green and black as if we could expect tornadoes. Wind from the southwest drove the rain almost sideways. Then came the hail. We noticed water raining down over the porch door inside the kitchen. Ed placed buckets there while Kaye went upstairs to the bedroom and found water pouring in, being blown in under the windows. After we got all this cleared up a bit, we checked places upstairs on the barn wall that had previous leaked and found all was dry. But when we got to the living room, we discovered close to a centimeter of water on the floor by the airlock, in the airlock itself, and in the porch outside. We were a bit dismayed, to say the least. Our kitchen cabinets-to-be and shelvng belonging to the stereo and records were standing there. We rescued this and started mopping. So much for our celebration.

Some of the water was blown in through the chimney (our roofer will put another sort of cap on it that may help with this). Some of the water came from the barn behind, where the old wall is crumbling.The rest was apparently flooding ground water, going though the barn and then seeping up through our floor. A neighbor said there was about 10 centimeters (4 inches) of water standing in front of the the barn at one point. (The same neighbors also lost their phone and television in the lightning storm Thursday-Friday night. We wonder if we're in the only ones in the village with internet.)

The truck with our stuff arrived just after 8am and disgorged boxes for about three hours. The Dutch driver had two French movers as helpers. The moving comapany knew there was a rocky road that had to be traversed, but neglected to load any temporary paving. No one had a dolly or other help for unloading and moving boxes, so we contributed our dolly and ladder. (That dolly has been on the best $25 investments we've ever made!)

The house is now full of boxes, less organized than we'd like because of the wet corner. We have before and after photos that we'll post when we can. Now we're going to take ourselves off for lunch at a new local cafe, then some errands (dump, grocery, pharmacy), then home to plan our attack on the piles of boxes.