Flooding

We had rain earlier this week, starting Sunday and going into Tuesday morning.  It was quite heavy Monday night, and that resulted in some local flooding.  Now the areas downstream are dealing with all the runoff, and there are some rivers flooding to our southeast. 
A few years ago, my sister gave me a jumbo rain gauge.  I bring it in during the winter, and I had just put it back outside last week.  There is a bright orange float which shows the water level.  Here you can see the float sitting at the empty bottom.

When I looked out Monday morning, a little vegetation obscured my view of the orange float, but I could see the gauge above about the 1" mark, so I knew we had less than about 1" at that point. 

Tuesday morning after it stopped raining, I glanced out.  I knew the float had to be high enough to be visible above the vegetation, but I didn't see it.  I went out and took a closer look.  No float in sight.

What?  You might have guessed--the entire gauge was full of water and the float was resting under the collar of the green funnel at the top.  

I can't say how much rain we got, but it's safe to say it was over 5 1/2".

We are in a low-lying area, so our crawl space was flooded, but the good news is that our soil drains very quickly.