This July 2026 storm ended up being 3X the forecasted rainfall, and more inches per hour than the systems could handle, creeks overflowed and storm sewers backed up. Many homes ended up with water in their basements and some places got it much worse. There were areas in town where cars were submerged higher than the windows!
As the “Times-Union” put it: “historic rainfall pummels region—the most rain since Hurricane Irene in 2011.”
Aside for all the damage and hassle, after all the work and clean-up, at the end of the day, the Baal Shem Tov encourages us to learn life lessons from all that we experience. This isn’t our first rain storm flooding post! See this 2025 page with links to various messages we’ve learned from rains and flooding over the years.
Now for the messages from this historic storm of July 2026:
THE HUNDRED-YEAR STORM
The technical definition of this term has little to do with frequency and more to do with statistics and the odds of it happening written as a percentage. But colloquially, it means that this type of storm is very rare. It hardly ever happens. There’s only approximately a 1% chance.
In this upstate region, in and around the Albany area, we’ve had two such intense rainstorms within 20 years: Hurricane Irene in 2011 and this year’s July rainstorm in 2026. Without wading into climate change right now, what we think of as a 100-year storm, may now (or at least currently) be classified as a 20-year storm.
Perhaps a message here about Big Opportunities. It used to be that life-changing opportunities were few and far between, but now they’re more readily available. Something as huge as a 100-year storm is now more within reach. Big things may be right around the corner, more than you might have expected. After all, this storm was forecasted to drop 2-4 inches of rain, and it ended up closer to 8-10 inches in 24 hours, with close to 12 inches (!) in some local areas. Things may end up to be much more than we imagined!
GRATEFUL ON OUR END
UAlbany reported flooding in some parts of the Lecture Centers and Fine Arts and PineBush buildings. Parts of the Purple Path were washed away. Neighbors on Fuller Road had the fire department come to pump out their basements. As is often the case, Western Ave and Fuller at Stuyvesant Plaza flooded again, but this time submerging some cars almost to their rooftops. We heard of many in the community who had significant flooding in their basements.
Thank G-d, Shabbos House kept dry! The water-collector/recharge-basin out back filled up quickly, with only a brick or less than that from the top. It worked as designed. Our basement stayed totally dry. We are very grateful. It made us appreciate Dan Hershberg’s engineering, Don Stracher’s architectual work, and Yefim Baskin’s construction for the new, bigger and better Shabbos House – to withstand such a significant storm.
We’re also grateful to UAlbany’s Grounds Crew. Their being on top of cleaning and clearing storm drains on a regular basis keeps water flowing as it should and not overflowing from the Great Dane Drive drain into the old Shabbos House. Their diligence saved the day! Otherwise, the old Shabbos House basement would have been a lake!
A LITTLE WATER AFTER THE BIG RAINFALL
The one student living at the Old Shabbos House over the summer went down and checked the basement and said overall it looked pretty dry. That’s good news! Not what we wouldn’t have expected after such a massive deluge of rain, in such a short time!
We went over late that night after the storm. The student was right about the main room, the kitchen area, and the bathroom. All dry! There’s a rough unfinished area of the basement that also had a little water in it, but not much.
Then we checked the bedrooms. Ah, there there was a little water, not much, maybe a quarter of an inch and not even throughout the whole room. But enough to deeply soak the floor rugs (see more on the floor rugs – below) and create a sheen of rippling clear water on the concrete surfaces. See below for how we dealt with the rugs, but first, we cleared the floors and whatever was on them, ran out to get a shop-vac and an extra dehumidifier. Working past midnight, we got the place dry again.
(BTW, the fact that there was SO little water in the old Shabbos House basement, despite great flooding all around us in such a tremendous storm with such a high water table, is a testament to the extra efforts by Simmy R. and Co when redoing the basement’s foundation walls, to parge extra and extra, and go the extra mile for extra protection. It really helped!)
But this “Little Water after the Big Rainfall” got me thinking:
(1) Sometimes we experience something really big, yet our takeaway may feel small, maybe inadequate. But often that small takeaway can be enough to make a real meaningful impact. You don’t need six inches of standing water to feel the after-effects of a storm. A quarter-inch of water also compels you to get down there and do something about it.
(2) Those who make Maple-Syrup know how much it takes to distill down to the level you want. There are many things in life that can take huge amounts of effort, or study, or investment to make a small but crucial dividend, to get to that desired end result.
(3) It can be easy to get lost in the macro picture, in the huge storm raging outside. But for us, working past midnight, we didn’t worry that much about the big picture. What mattered most was that quarter-inch (maybe half-inch in some places?) of water sitting there where it didn’t belong. See this related post about the One Glass Among Many Barrels.
ABSORPTION AND RETENTION
Absorption and Retention are usually seen as desired traits, especially when it comes to studying, testing and ideas.
When it comes to flooding, however, it’s the exact opposite. The more the object absorbs water, the more of a problem it can become. Rugs and carpets can be a particularly difficult issue with flooding basements (see more on that below). You need it to dry out quickly, and don’t want to give mold a chance to grow. But the more it absorbs and retains water, the harder that becomes.
Back to ideas and studying, that’s where absorption and retention are ideal! Some people have a hard time taking it all in. For too many people, or at least in certain areas or subjects, it’s in one ear and out the other. That’s too bad. It’s a great skill to be able to internalize, to take it in, hold onto it, and know how to remember and access it. One of the Rebbe’s simplest yet most beautiful teachings on the Giving of the Torah is this lesson on why there was No Echo at Sinai that relates to this idea of absorption. You can also see more on this absorption concept in a slightly different way via the lens of Matzah-Ball Physics in Staying Afloat.
A TALE OF TWO CARPETS
We had to deal with two soaking wet rugs. Again, it wasn’t a whole lot of water, but enough to deeply soak the two rugs. We used squeegee and Shop-Vac, and tried shaking it out. Still damp, moist, dripping wet. Carpet is absorbent, it has all that fiber, it holds water in.
But there was a difference. Carpet A was machine-washable. Not as plush or rich or soft, but it was machine-washable. So we got rid of as much water as we could and brought it to a big commercial size washer-machine (without an agitator), washed it out, and ran a few low cycles in the commercial dryer. It was still moist, but not wet anymore. Then we hung it out to dry. This one could survive the storm.
Carpet B was a softer carpet, with a lot more plush fiber, way too much absorption, we just couldn’t get the water out. This carpet was non-machine-washable. We didn’t really know how long it was wet for. Leaving it longer could breed mold and that wasn’t something we wanted to risk. So we had to dispose of it.
While absorption has its tremendous advantages, without an ability for a much-needed reset (machine-washability) it has a big liability. You can’t always keep taking things in forever. That cleanse, that machine-washability, helps us get back down on the floor after a difficult and overwhelming storm and do our thing again.
—
Again, look back to see our 2025 post on flooding with various posts on the positive, constructive and meaningful messages to gleaned from such rainfall and flooding in our personal lives!