Buy an Ark for Christmas...

Here in the PNW, you just might need one.
We had all kinds of water adventures today (& as I write this, it is raining steadily again). Levi got up early & made it to work in Woodinville just fine. Once there, he found three-and-a-half feet of standing water against their loading dock doors. He said he won't be surprised if they find stranded fish once the water finally goes down.
I ventured out around 9:30am to see if I could make a quick trip to the office to get a couple things. Simonds Road was already pretty flooded & I sat in the backup at the light for twenty minutes before giving up & turning around--good thing I did!
I settled in to work from home until I saw my neighbor head outside with a shovel & a grim expression. I geared up & headed out to discover that our parking lot was completely flooded, the water having made it into some people's garages & encroaching upon their front doors. The stream that gave us trouble last winter was holding its banks just fine behind our house. But across the street on Simonds, it burst the banks & flooded onto the road, flowing directly down our street & into our parking lot like a river.
I headed off to Home Depot with a neighbor to get sandbags & told Levi to hurry home from work. He arrived shortly & we spent the afternoon digging the walkway to the slough into a waterway to drain the parking lot & keep water out of people's homes.
Check out the photo below--behind Calvin, see the brown river flowing through our cul-de-sac?

The parking lot around midday today.

The river flowing into our complex.

Digging the water trench deeper (not easy when the soil is clay).

Here's our waterway to run everything off into the wetlands.

Once again, the flooded parking lot.

Standing in front of the houses with the highest water level. Their garages were flooded & we were checking to make sure their front doors were still safe.

Towards evening the problem was finally being fixed from the source. You probably won't recognize the street below, but that's Simonds Road looking west. Once there was enough sandbags, they were able to block about half the flow from the swollen creek & divert it from flowing down our street to flowing down Simonds & then into the slough.

Here's the view from where the creek broke its banks & overflowed the road.

Now at 7pm, things are looking better, although we're concerned about how much rain we'll get tonight. We've found & uncovered some of our drains & the water level in the parking lot has dropped. Much of the runoff has to do directly with all the construction up the hill from us--now that the water has drained a little, we can see the four inches of silt & muck left behind.
We are certainly blessed with the location of our unit--we are in an ideal spot with no water getting too close to our garage or front door, & barely any water in our crawl space.
There are so many people throughout the area who have fared far worse than we have.
We'll see what tomorrow brings. For now we're very happy to be in our warm, dry home with some dinner & ibuprofen. We hope you all are faring well.
And while I was kidding about literally needing an Ark, Heifer does actually have one--Gift of an Ark.