The Upper Midwest is Melting....Melting [View all]

[MineralMan]

I woke up this morning to hear my basement sump pump working too hard. The snow is starting to melt, and we have a few days coming with temps in the 40s and rain falling.

So, after I got up, I unplugged the sump pump so it wouldn't burn out its motor. Then, I tromped through 18" of snow in the back yard to inspect its outlet pipe and hose. I had to expose the outlet pipe by removing the snow cover for about 8' from the house along its path.

As I expected, it was frozen and full of ice, so the sump pump couldn't do anything. Fortunately, I had anticipated this and had some new pipe, a new 25' hose, and the fittings needed in the garage. So, I sawed off the PVC outlet pipe about a foot from the house and installed a new fitting and the hose, draping the hose atop the deep snow in the yard. A temporary fix.

Back in the house, I plugged the sump pump back in and listened to it pumping out its basin and then the anti-backflow ball valve bouncing after it shut off. Once again, I'm good to go for a while. I'll have to drain the hose manually if the weather gets cold enough to freeze water in the new hose, though.

Once the snow is gone, I'm going to re-engineer the whole outlet thing so it drains better and won't freeze again next year.

The warmer weather and the rain will finally clear the compacted snow and ice off our street, but today, the road is bumpy, rutted, and slippery still. My neighbor and I dug out the storm drain in the street earlier so water can drain from the street. But, that's just one storm drain, there are thousands of them in St. Paul, MN, and most of them are buried under compacted snow and ice, so we're going to get some street flooding. Not in front of my house, though. Our drain will work fine.

We had a lot of snow, and it's all going to melt pretty fast, according to the weather report. We're going to get flooding from our rivers, guaranteed. The Mississippi runs through the middle of the city, and there are two other rivers in the Metro area that will also flood, no doubt. We're in for an ugly month or so.

In a week, if the weather holds as predicted, we'll have brown yards to look at and all the winter's snow will be gone off our roads. Spring may actually arrive. But, no time to relax. Last year we got 18" of snow in the second week of April.

And the sump pump just now ran through another cycle as I was typing.