Our Own Personal Mini Flood
If you live in Ames, you might have noticed there was a rather large rain storm in the middle of the day today. Not long after it started, I heard a water-sounding noise that was unfamiliar. I wandered around the house, looking out the windows…was it just the gutters overflowing? Was a window open somewhere?
After a little bit, I went down stairs. It seemed to be coming from the direction of Holly’s room, so I went in, knowing that Holly was at class. I was shocked to see water cascading down from window sill of the egress window in her room! I first panicked and threw blankets on the window sill to catch the water from hitting the floor. I then realized Holly would probably want me to take the numerous books, DVDs and VHS tapes out of the window sill to save them from getting any wetter than they already were.
After throwing all of her stuff on the bed, the water was cascading down even faster, and I could see nearly a foot of standing water in the large egress-enabled window well! The water was gushing in between the panes of the window. I quickly ran around the house to grab towels, and threw them all in the window sill, but not before a lot of water had gotten into the carpet. I kept thinking to myself, “Of all the weeks for Nate Swinton to be in Louisiana, it had to be this one when I could really use him and his powerful carpet cleaning machines!” 
The water didn’t really stop coming in until it had all drained out of the window well and into the room, but at least some of it was contained by the dozen or so sopping wet towels. When Tony got home a couple hours later, we moved a lot of furniture out of Holly’s room and used a small Bissell carpet cleaning machine (Thanks for the donation of that a while back, Russ!) to suck up 4 tank-fulls of water — maybe 15 or 20 gallons? It seemed to take a long time.
The insurance adjuster will hopefully come out tomorrow to help us figure out if we have any longer-lasting damage from our little flood. We’re not sure if there is anything wrong with the basement drywall or the window itself or if there might still be gross stuff (you know, the “M” word) starting to grow under the carpet or behind the walls. We do know that there are some definite drainage issues in the back yard that we need to get fixed before the snow flies this winter!