If I understand your proposed scheme, you're going to create a subsurface, gravel-filled trench across the drive and imbed a channel drain in its upper portion (which is the driveway)...? In theory it sounds reasonable, but I suppose in practice, that's a lot of hole-drilling to actually make into that channel to handle the volume of water. Drains have away of silting and clogging up as though it's their objective. Seems like unless the holes were sizable and numerous, the drain could fail. Then again, a french drain is subject to failure after a while due to silting up. Then again, if this drain fails completely, the only downside is that the effort and expense of creating it come to a premature demise. I consider french drains a last resort because of their limitations. Being filled with rock, they're inefficient in how much material their construction requires relative to their capacity to store water. Seems to me it would be much more efficient to have a sturdy underground storage vessel that was strong enough that it didn't need to be filled with rock... then to have a conventional water collection and piping system (like a trench drain with no holes and some 4" pipe connecting to it.) I'm thinking that a buried section of standard concrete pipe could be fitted for use as a retention device...kind of like a cistern that leaks on purpose. It would not need to be near the size of a french drain to hold the same amount, or more, of water. It would not need to be located directly under the drive. And I think it would be much cheaper as the pipe itself is not expensive. They're a little heavy to move, but not impossible. This is a little tangential but for fun, here's a link to a video that shares some secrets of manually moving very heavy objects. Here is a link that might be useful: Guy explains moving very heavy objects

The heavy rains and winds started around 3PM. Red Salvia is laying on the ground and tithonia is snapped at ground level. Keep reminding myself people have it much worse with loss of property and even lives so it's not the end of the world if the nectaring bunch have to use staked up zinnias to eat! Last 2 chrysalides I brought into garage are getting very dark. Just checked forecast for tomorrow (Sunday) and sun should be out by later in afternoon. After seeing more than a few eclose I know what the chrysalis looks like a day before...and they're going to pop tomorrow. Gotta get them dried out and ready to fly as soon as the sun appears tomorrow. If they aren't ready during that sunny window before nightfall I'll have to "sponge feed" them until Monday when it's weather forecast is all clear. It just occurred to me that I haven't worried about the power going out or some of the Chinese Wisteria choked trees coming down like last storm but it's the Monarchs I've been concentrating on since last night...LOL. Come on, Tracey, spill about what plants you got on clearance at Lowe's! :) I need to get my behind out to nurseries and garden centers to see what I can find on clearance that I won't kill over winter if I don't get to do the 24" deep amending thing again in less than ideal soil/drainage conditions even though I did that last fall. What does this clay want from me...LOL.

Long day. Its finally stopped about 11PM. 12" here, and probably very close to that at National Airport. Still lots of wind and blowing and drifting, but the skies are now clear. Yesterday, up until about 4am it was a "warm storm" with temps around 32. Its been below 20F since about 8am here. The snow held and held and held on for longer than expected. This was definitely the storm of a lifetime, EVEN IF we had not had the 2 feet here last weekend, just the sheer conditions this storm produced, especially the whiteouts, and the near hurricane force winds along with 4-6 foot drifts, countless downed trees...etc. etc. etc. was a once in a lifetime event here in the Mid Atlantic. However, since we did have 2 feet on the ground already, it was just all the more historic. TZ7, Be safe! I hope you guys dont get it as bad as we did here, especially in terms of the winds. Many of our streets look like the photos you posted, and some were with downed traffic signals. Post more pics if you can! Suffice it to say, all of my palms, including the large trachy in the pot wrapped in plactic and xmas lights, are buried. The in ground palms were buried as of last saturday, and now they are under 3 feet. My smaller trachy unfortunately had spear pull, although that may be more attributed to the fact I left the xmas lights on it one day when we hit 49, and the palm cooked to well over 100F im sure. It somewhat dessicated after that, and has not looked good since. I think these storms just pushed it over the edge. Well see if I cant get it to come back. Ok Im going to bed. Ill post more photos tomorrow. Night all! Be safe.

Still busy with the remodeling so I didn't get a chance to upload pictures last weekend. Maybe next? Anyway, finding someone to do the plaster was tough. There aren't many in my area (SF bay area) though more than in other areas: SF has a lot of existing plaster and though people are mostly replacing it, there's enough work to keep folks busy. I don't actually remember where I found someone to do the work. Some mix of Yelp, Nextdoor, Angie's List, and general web searches. I found several people that will do minor repairs but mostly do stucco, no interior. I only found two that actually do interior and one never got back to me. The guy I found is old school: Irish accent and all. He started in London and did a bunch of work in NY before moving to the bay area. He runs a single crew of 3-5 guys and does a lot of the work himself.