Evening excitement?

I left home at 5:45 for an evening of knitting in Randolph.  It was still daylight (oh joy), and the road was just damp and a little muddy. 

Upon my return at 8pm, in pitch dark,  I drove over my brook's culvert and drove over very large pieces of ice lying in the road. Strange. Very strange. I didn't investigate. It was DARK and muddy.

I walked into the house and the phone rang. My neighbor said "You should check your cellar for water." Oh no. I looked.  Dry. Bone dry. (Imagine rejoicing.) "There was a flood sometime after dark.  It looks like the beaver dam above the highway let loose again." Therein lies a tale that's too long to tell here, but I believe that some back-yard regrading in 1999 has unintentionally but fortunately saved the house from two floods.  The state claims to be watching that swamp but money is tight now and beaver dams are certainly not a priority, if they ever were.

Apparently the water roared down, flooded the culvert, crossed the road and rushed down the other side, destroying another neighbor's drive, just as it did in 2007.

We'll know more in the morning.  Stay tuned for details.

Update: Morning dawned and the picture was clearer.  A lot of water went through the culvert but ice piled up somewhere and forced the water out of the brook and  into Paul's cow pasture, across the road  in another place, and straight down Jack's drive, carving small furrows as it went.  But this water joined up with the water that got through the culvert and Jack's driveway looks once again as though God rained boulders.  Like 2007 except the washouts are only 3 feet deep, not 6 feet. Small consolation for Jack.  If you'd been here in 2007 you'd understand what an event this is.  Also amazing is that no one heard anything. Paul's wife was home and heard nothing. Jamie across the street was running her dishwasher and heard nothing. Ray's girlfriend thought the brook sounded "a little loud".  This is a flash flood that comes and goes in no time at all.