Rain (or excuses)

Holy batman! We just had a very quick rain storm that ravaged the neighborhood. No really... our tornado siren started blaring, and then our basement flooded. We have an outdoor stairway that leads down to an entryway in the basement. Whenever leaves get stuck in the gutter at the bottom of the stairwell (every time) the water doesn't have anywhere to go. So whenever a bad storm hits, we typically have a bit of water leak in. Today we got the mother load of water which soaked the carpet in a different part of the basement. George is working on drying up the room at the moment, but we really need to find a solution to prevent the flooding in the first place.