The Weather Outside Is Frightful

It was raining earlier, judging by the sounds of it on the rooftop, but I didn't pay the weather much mind. However, after the house went to sleep, I went to use the bathroom sometime around 1 am-ish. The toilet drained fine (thank god), but I noticed that it didn't refill with water. And then at the sink, the running water had been cut down to a bare minimum low flow.

Then I looked outside and well, it's your typical ice storm that occurs when there's rain and then it freezes and then it snows. It's like everything has been frozen and then coated with a layer of powdered snow. Except for one minor detail. Looking out front, the road is neither frozen nor snowy. It's actually running with a heavy current like a stream out in the woods somewhere. Wow. That's what that quiet rumbling noise in the background was.

So I guess there was a problem up the hill a house or two. Frozen water pipes? Broken water pipes? I wanted to go out and check it out, because this is a very rare situation, and maybe get some idea at least of where all that water's coming from, but after suiting up for the cold (and reviving some of the gear I used at Burning Man), I looked again and there were some trucks just up the road, obviously dealing with whatever the problem was (and is). I decided to stay inside for obvious reasons.

I wonder just what happened, and how long it will take to fix. And what kind of damage the problem is causing. There's a stream going through the front yard and under the van, a sort of offshoot from the main stream - not as heavy, but you can tell the water's run through because the snow is melted in those spots. A very interesting sight.



Oh great, I was okay earlier because, if weak, there was still *some* water pressure, but now it seems to have stopped altogether. Oh dear. There's a guy out on the street shoveling stuff off the road - at least one item looked to be a stick/branch, dunno about the rest. The current in the road seems to have lessened a bit. I really hope it doesn't take 24 hours or something to get running water back...