In which it rains and rains, and rains, and (did I mention) rains.

It's currently around 2:30 on Tuesday afternoon, and it's been raining, more or less nonstop, since Saturday afternoon. Not storming, mind you, at least not after the beginning, but raining steadily. Our local streams (there are three of them that flow through the town) normally look something like this:

    

       

As you can see, they're pretty calm. Not a lot of water. Lots of ducks.

Right now, they look like this:

Of course you can't tell from the photos how fast the water is going. That tree in the water in the middle photo? It's normally high and dry on the bank of the stream. And that little outcropping of rocks with the ducks in the top row of pictures? It's just beyond the red brick wall on the right hand picture on the bottom row. As you can see, it's completely underwater, as is the bridge that child number one is walking across on the top row.

On the plus side, we don't seem to be having any actually flooding here. The stream beds are deep enough so that even though the water is 3-4 feet above normal (which is maybe 6-9 inches), it isn't coming out of its banks. A lot of the towns around here are having actual flooding, and earlier our train line to Paris was cut because water was over the tracks, rendering the train signals unusable. There are also a number of roads (mostly regional but some national routes) that are also currently closed because of flooding.

The current forecast is for rain, more or less, until next Tuesday, at which point I'm looking forward to drying out my soggy shoes.