Worms, worms and more worms !!

The sidewalk on the back side of our house fills up with water with heavy rain. This morning there were dozens and dozens of worms in the water. We've seen just a few in the past after a heavy rain but this was a pile of worms when we swept them up. They were still alive and very active, trying to crawl out of the bucket we put them in. Larry put them in one of our compost piles with some fresh kitchen scraps.

Any explanation for this? Do worms come out of the ground so as not to drown ???

Yes, I've seen that happen. I can't tell if those are earthworms, but earthworms do sometimes come out...or maybe they are washed out of the ground?

I found one site re earthworms that said, "Do not come to the surface during rain to escape drowning, but rather to find a mate since their mobility is much better on wet ground." http://www.compost-bin.com/column.shtml

These are not as fat as what I thought an earthworm usually is. Of course, they were struggling and really stretched out moving around in the water and when we swept them up in a dustpan, they curled up and were not as skinny looking. Also read there are thousands of different kinds of earthworms.