What to Check on a Job Site Before a Two-Inch Rain
This one is for the people running crews, not the homeowners.
1 to 1.5 inches is forecast across the Carolinas between 18 and 23 September, with some locations over two inches, onto ground that has been dry since spring. If you have open work, the twenty minutes you spend on a Friday walk decides whether Monday is a normal day or a week of rework you are not getting paid for.
None of this is novel to anybody who has been doing it a while. It is written down because writing it down is what makes it happen on the Friday you are already behind.
Open excavation
Any trench that is open is going to be full, and on clay it will hold water rather than drain. Decide now whether you are backfilling today or covering. A trench that fills and then has sidewalls slump is not just water to pump — it is a re-dig, and on a T&M job it is an argument.
If you are leaving it open, note the condition in writing before you go, with photographs. The difference between "the trench collapsed in the storm" and "the trench collapsed" is entirely a documentation question when it comes up three weeks later.
Stockpiles
Soil, sand, and screenings all move. A stockpile on a slope with two inches of rain on it relocates, and it relocates downhill toward whatever is downhill — frequently a kerb line, a storm inlet, or the neighbouring property.
Cover or berm. The cost of the tarp is not the point; the cost of shovelling your own stockpile out of somebody's storm inlet, and the conversation that accompanies it, is the point.
Disturbed slopes
Bare graded slope with no cover is the highest-risk surface on any site. Dry hard clay sheds water once the surface seals, and what sheets, carries.
Straw, blanket, or tack — whatever is in the truck. Partial cover on the steepest third beats full cover you did not have time for.
Perimeter controls
Walk the silt fence rather than looking at it from the truck. What you are looking for is the bottom: fence that is not trenched in does nothing, because water goes underneath rather than through. A fence that has already been loaded from a previous storm has less capacity than it looks like it has.
Check inlet protection on anything you are responsible for. This is the item that turns into a municipal conversation rather than a client conversation, and those are worse.
Newly planted material
Anything installed in the last fortnight has a root ball sitting in a hole in clay, and that hole is about to become a container. Plants that have been in a week can drown in a saturated clay pocket while everything around them looks fine.
Where you can, break the downhill lip of the saucer so water has somewhere to go instead of ponding against the stem.
The documentation, which is the part that pays
Photograph every active area before you leave, with a timestamp. It takes four minutes.
Storm damage on an open site turns into one of three conversations: a change order, a warranty claim, or an argument. In all three, the person with dated photographs of the pre-storm condition is the person who gets a reasonable outcome. The person relying on memory pays for it.
If you are writing that up afterwards, a daily job report and a change order are much easier to defend than an email — and a change order written the same week beats one written when the invoice is queried.
If you want a hand with it
Carolina Terrain works in Waxhaw, Weddington, Marvin, Wesley Chapel, Matthews, Indian Trail, Monroe and south Charlotte. Request a consultation or call 980-280-7638. The sixteen forms we use for exactly this — daily job report, job photo log, change order, scope of work, plus a pricing and markup calculator you put your own numbers into — are in the Landscape Contractor Forms Bundle. Everything we have published is indexed on the Start Here page, sorted by the problem rather than the date.
Where these numbers come from
Drought classifications, reservoir levels and streamflow records: NC DEQ press release, 17 September 2026.
County-level precipitation departure and drought coverage: NIDIS / U.S. Drought Monitor, Union County.
Rainfall forecast for 18-23 September 2026: WBTV, 18 September 2026.
Tall fescue seeding guidance: NC State Extension TurfFiles.
Soil texture and compaction: NC State Extension Gardener Handbook, chapter 1.
Written by Alex Purdy, owner-operator of Carolina Terrain LLC in Waxhaw. NC Landscape Contractor Licence CL.1872, NCSU Stormwater Control Measure Inspection & Maintenance Certification #5970, NDS Certified Drainage Contractor. Not a Professional Engineer and not a Registered Landscape Architect — nothing here is an engineered design, and work requiring either of those licences should go to somebody who holds it.
Comments