Thursday, June 11, 2009

It Was a Dark and Stormy Midday

A major storm passed through the Dallas Fort Worth area last night and it's still raining outside . . . and inside my loft. After a restless night of waking to thunder and lightning, I thought I'd sleep a little later than usual, but my cats had other ideas and were quite vocal in their desire that I get out of bed and attend to them this morning.

I imagined it was because their food bowls were empty. I never imagined it was because their food bowls were filled with water . . . and that there was a large puddle of water at the other end of my itty bitty loft and that the rain, still pouring down quite hard and blowing sideways, was also raining inside . . . and that my dining table and chairs were sitting in water and rugs were wet.

I quickly moved furniture and picked up watere-soaked rugs, grabbed towels to mop up the water and tried to keep up with the water pouring in as best as I could. It continued to pour in Not from just under and around the French doors, as I imagined, but from the top of the door frame, above the windows as well, from where the raindrops would bounce and propel themselves quite far into the room. I put down a dry, folded towel at the point the rain was falling inside, to soak it up and prevent it's spread. My cat, Johnny, promptly decided to play . . . because, as we all know, to a cat, everything is a toy, even a dry bath towel.

Proof that everything is a toy to a cat Who me?

Eventually, he abandoned his toy and I was able to use it as intended. Later, he would begrudgingly perched on top of it as is and watch the weather through the glass. The rain slowed a bit temporarily–and stopped blowing sideways–and I was able to take this photo of the skies above City Hall at 11AM. It's quite a contrast to the hot, bright sunny days of the past few weeks.

Skies about City Hall at 11AM

Since starting this blog post, the skies have opened up again and the lightning and thunder have been non-stop. I think Johnny has even joined his scaredy cat sister, Grace Hopper, deep inside a cabinet as away from the excitement as possible and I'm going to turn off the computer as soon as I finish this post. I won't be surprised if we lose power–this is pretty spectacular . . . and the water is pouring in again. Gotta run and grab some dry towels.

7 comments:

Suzanne Earley said...

oh, i hate, hate, hate when water comes in where it isn't supposed to be.

hopefully this passes quickly without too much damage.

lj_cox said...

Oh no! Is that a 'feature' of the severity of the storm, or of the inadequacy of the door?

Suze said...

oh Sophie..hope you don't get too drowned.. Have you contacted the super about the water coming in thru the door frame and window? they may be able to put some weather striping on it so that doesn't happen in the future...
Cute pictures of Johnny! Yep..mine think any towel on the floor is theirs too...

sophie said...

I got hit again soon after I posted yesterday and later, the building's maintenance guy came by–I was one of many on a long list of water problems in the building. I showed him where the water was coming in. He and I leaned out over the Juliet rail so he could show me the design flaw that results in the rain coming IN instead of flowing AWAY from the building at the window openings. It's only been 4 years since the building was converted to lofts, so it really is a design problem and not an age issue. I am NOT looking forward to the next big storm.

Of course it could be much worse, some neighborhoods around here are still underwater because lightning took out one of the pumping stations.

Christine Thresh said...

I thought about you when I saw the weather reports about Dallas on TV.

Collagemama said...

I've lived in the DFW metroplex for almost twenty years. That was by far the weirdest storm I can remember. Sorry to hear about your water problems. Hope all is dry now.

prairiekat said...

Sophie,,I thought you lived in a loft, not a pontoon! I don't like the maint man's excuses, doesn't he know about patching or modifications? He needs a little quilter's type perspective-.
Hope all else is going fine for you. I am not sure where I am on this blog thing, perhaps I am finally into google. Kathy in Colo

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