when it rains, it floods...literally

On facebook, I've mentioned my room flooding yesterday and several people have wondered how it happened. So, I figured I'd write about it on my blog to give you the whole story. I woke up around 6am on Wednesday morning to a big thunderstorm. It started raining really hard, but I didn't think anything of it. I dozed off until my alarm went off at 6:30am. As I'm laying in bed I realize it sounds like there is running water in my room. I turn on my lamp and look towards my window, figuring that would be where the water would come in. The windowsill is dry, so I look down at the floor. There was water spreading from the wall to my bed. I got up, made sure my blanket wasn't touching the floor, and tried to figure out where the water was coming from. Just above the baseboard, the paint on the wall was bubbling out and there was a steady stream of water flowing into my room. I spent the next 20 minutes getting towels to soak up water, and moving everything that was on the floor to my bed or the laundry room. At 7am, the water was just reaching my bedroom door and starting to spill into the hallway (it had already flooded our little bathroom that seperates the two bedrooms). By this time, the rain outside had lighten up and water stopped running into my room. My carpet was soaked and there was a thin layer of water on top. I had to ask the girls to give me their towels so I could soak up water and keep it from going into the other bedroom. I did not get to take a shower and as the girls got ready for school, I was trying to decide how I was going to get the water out of my room. After we dropped the kids off at school and had our team meeting, my coworker and I borrowed a shop vacuum and a dehumidifier from Grace's shop. Two other coworkers came over with extra towels, and we started ringing out the soaked towels and putting the dry ones day (which were soaked right away). We then started vacuuming up water. We spent a couple hours taking turns vacuuming and rining out towels and moving furniture out of the room. We probably removed a 10 gallons of water from the room, and even after that the carpet still felt soaked. We'd walk around and have water pool around our feet. We got a couple fans and got those going and took a break for lunch. After that it was a matter of waiting for the floor to dry. When it was time for bed last night, the carpet was still pretty wet so I had to sleep on the couch downstairs. This morning the carpet is much drying...in certain areas. It smells, but I'm hoping that once everything is dry the smell will go away. This has been a very interesting experience, and I hope I don't have to go through it again for a long time.