Farnsworth House

A Near Flood Over the Holiday

Monday, December 29th, 2008

We weathered a near miss over the holiday weekend. On Friday we had about 12 inches of snow on the frozen ground. The temperature rose quickly to near 40 causing the snow to quickly melt. If that weren’t enough to cause the river to rise, we also received 2 to 3 inches of rain Friday night and all day Saturday with temperatures nearing 60. Flood warnings were sent throughout our area.

To be safe we completely protected the collections in the house in just over 6o minutes with very few volunteers. Staff member Deena, her husband Dean, my daughter Cami, my husband Russ and Dave, a friend of the family, all went down Friday morning and raised and bagged and stacked everything. Thankfully Mother Nature chose not to test us with a winter flood. We are debating perhaps leaving everything raised through the remainder of the off season, or until work begins on the interior from the LAST damaging event in September.

The following picture was taken at 3 p.m. on Sunday, December 28. You can see why even a slight warning, it’s imperative that we protect the house immediately.