I know what ya mean, micro. When we first bought our second house, we had to get some landscape work done. We were on a circle and the front yard sloped down towards the house. There was a 3-inch drainage pipe around the south side of the house that was hooked into the gutter downspouts along the front and side, but that was it. We put drains all along the front flower beds and hooked a 4-inch drainage pipe along the north side of the house into the downspouts on that side. After we did all of this, there were no more flooding issues in the front of the house ... it all drained into the back alley. Well, shortly after this was all complete, we had a 12+ inch rain in a 24-hour period. I was out in the back yard, next to the alley, checking on the 4-inch line and it was shooting just like a fire hose - the stream was completely clearing the alley and landing way into the back yard of the house behind us.
The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted. ~ D.H. Lawrence