Day of the Inn Dweller, 45th of Childwinter, 525 M.E. (Castor): I got my steps in today (6.8 miles) but I missed last Wednesday. It had rained all that day, hard and persistently, with no chance of letting up. In fact, it only increased in intensity as the day went on, climaxing in a thunderstorm and torrential downpour around 11:00 pm.  The rain lasted until around sunrise on Thursday morning. 

According to the National Weather Service, a fine government bureau which should definitely stay open and not be shut down, 3.97 inches of rain fell on Monday, Tuesday, and mostly Wednesday, before it finally blew over on Thursday morning.   

Peachtree Creek apparently jumped its banks again from all the rain. There was sediment on the ground in places where the loop trail around the Bobby Jones Golf Course nears the creek, ranging from fine sand to silt and slippery mud. The footpath that goes beneath the Northside Drive bridge over the creek was nearly impassible because of the thick, slick mud. According to the USGS, another fine government bureau, the creek crested at 17.67 feet early on Thursday morning. For comparison, it crested at 23.75 feet on September 27 following Hurricane Helene. 

Here's a graph of the creek levels for the past six months. The first big peak is Helene and the last one was Wednesday. 

Helene aside, the creek hadn't been this high since last March, and even then, it was a whole 0.5-foot lower. The rising water levels must have put quite the scare in the homeowners near the creek, who are still recovering from the flooding following Helene, although I don't think the water quite reached their homes. 

Two points here: first, in these days when government agencies that don't serve the direct needs of Elon Musk are being shut down, it's important to note how some departments operating on a miniscule percentage of the federal budget still provide useful (and free) data for our lives. Second, in these days of climate change and increasing storm frequency, it's worth noting how "only" slightly less than four inches of rain took us right to the precipice of damaging floods.

We might not be so lucky next time.