Wild night

Last night was deeply unpleasant in this area.  We had several tornadoes spawn southwest of us and pass through.  Lots of Joplin's bedroom communities got hit, and one stayed on the ground, traveling northeast for a good long while after it left city limits.  Several areas to our northeast got plastered, too.  Reports are still coming in.  It wasn't as bad as the tornado that hit Joplin exactly eight years earlier (the monster F5 tornado that left a swath of destruction a mile wide and six miles long hit on May 22, 2011), but it was still nasty, scary, and probably re-traumatized a whole lot of people. 

And that wasn't all of it.  We had several inches of rain dumped on us, too.  It overwhelmed the, admittedly minimal outside city limits, storm drainage around our house.  I woke up at six this morning to our entire front yard flooded up to the oaks about fifteen feet from the front of the house (our front yard is HUGE), and both sides of the driveway covered in a river of fast-running water.  Looked about three inches deep or so. 

It has since receded a good bit.  I mean, it's still flowing pretty quick, but the river itself is narrower, and a little shallower.  I wasn't sure we'd be able to get out for the kids' last day of school, but it looks like it's going to happen. 

I mean, I'm not getting out, but Odysseus is taking the kids in.  It should recede the rest of the way before their release time at 11:00 a.m.  It's close, even now.

I'm really hoping this is all for a while.  We've had over eight inches of rain in the past three days, and had tornadoes on Monday and then again last night.  I'm really, really tired of this shit.