What do you save first when the storm hits?

Medicine, golf clubs, collector trains and ferrets.

Suburban homeowners grabbed these and other valuables as rain struck, electricity failed and flooding loomed late this week.

Blustering storms left little time for difficult choices.

Barb Poppen watched water threaten to spill into her South Elgin home a block away from the swollen Fox River. Neighbors and friends rushed to empty kitchen cabinets and clear away anything electric before Poppen's family evacuated.

"I grabbed medicine for my daughter," Poppen said Friday as she surveyed her home now swamped by three feet of water. "Everything went so fast."

Homeowners in other towns also raced to salvage their basements, crawlspaces and kitchens.

Andrea Sperath targeted her sister's three ferrets, which live in the basement of her Des Plaines home. Her son's television, electronics and any salvageable furniture followed.

"Anytime it rains, it's like, 'OK, here we go again,'" Sperath said.

And again and again.

With more rain forecast, a flood watch remained in effect through late Friday, the National Weather Service reported.

Pelting rain and up to 70 mph winds darkened homes and disabled sump pumps, causing water to leak into many homes. For those near waterways, like South Elgin's Poppen, the flood risk grew with every inch of rain that fell on the already over-laden Des Plaines and Fox rivers.

"It's possible we've had more water," Poppen said of her home. "I can't walk through to check."

Whatever the cause -- failed pumps or filled rivers -- the dilemma was the same: what to save first?

Robert Smith of Elgin snagged his golf clubs.

For 12-year-old Patrick O'Malley of Des Plaines, it was his collector trains.

O'Malley gathered the black train he was given when he was born and a Chicago Cubs-theme train -- his "pride and joy," his mother, Mary O'Malley, said.

Pat and Loren Kaszubowski cleared the basement of anything valuable in their Des Plaines home years ago. They learned the hard way.

Pat Kaszubowski lost a box filled with childhood mementos to a flood when the coupled lived in Park Ridge. They'd both stacked crates of old yearbooks and keepsakes in the basement. Hers was on the bottom.

"It had everything -- the pressed flowers, the signature book from eighth grade," Kaszubowski recalled Friday minutes after power returned to her home. "It was awful. … But you learn."