As in the above, you need to analyze the entire water shed top to bottom. Where is the water coming from and can it be diverted? If not, is there a lower elevation it can be drained to?

I will also say that water will not percolate down or drain on top of frozen ground. It's called mud season. It could even be prevented from draining to a lower elevation by an un-melted ice and snow dam. If this area does not get standing water after everything has thawed, you may not have a flooding problem.

I agree with that last statement.

Until the frost goes out of the ground, the water will sit on top and as far down as it's still froze, making for a muddy mess..

If you have heavy clay soil, that could be another month or two before the thaw happens, depending on the weather and rains.

Even after it's thawed out and/or it rains any amount, you have to wait for heavy soils to dry out before driving on it or you'll rut up everything.

And for goodness sakes, stay out of there the skid loader or any kind of vehicle for that matter. :-)

eta: you might have to wait until summer or even fall before you can do any dirt moving or grading, just depends on your soil type and how much rain you get.

Everything described is within my property, the beginning of the swale is shown on the very left of this photo(directly in front of the indented section of the fence) and then keeps going for another 100+ ft and leads to the storm grate. The storm grate is indeed at the lowest part of my whole property. The water runs smoothly to the storm grate. However after eroding the soil with the skid steer, the groundwater started rising and has been like that ever since. The flood there always formed after every rain and this started in October before frost even started. So it's definitely not the frozen soil holding up the water. I think there's just so much groundwater in that area that nothing percolates.

That huge flood pile you see isn't natural. It all happened after the damage from the skid machine so I want to reverse that and just bring everything back to normal. But with so much rain in NJ and my property being in the lowest spot I don't know how to fix this.

So the storm catch basin is on your property? Do you have a drainage easement then? Still not quite understanding . . . I count 7 fence panels beyond that 'notch,' so 7x6'=42' to the perpendicular fence. Start with a site plan and plot on all the pertaining grade elevations, downspouts, and sump discharge. If you don't have a transit or laser, you can measure your elevation changes with cheap mason line and string level.

Oh, and for finish grading with a skidsteer always use tracks and a bucket with no teeth.

You might have to look at creating a pond to give the water a place to pool during wet weather and some way to channel overflow to the storm grate. Could be, it you get things leveled out again, like they were, it might improve the situation.

Drainage tiles/tubes installed in strategic parts of the yard, will send water underground towards the storm grate.

Really hard to tell what's happening from your description and looking at a picture, you might have to get professional help on this one.

I would think with the right equipment and know how, things could be made to drain a lot better.

That looks very much like my parents yard and neighborhood. When the land was developed originally there was a swampy pond that the city installed a storm sewer in the back yard that basically served for run off to about 9 homes to drain and keep draining water in the late 1950's. They are also cursed with heavy clay that keeps water from percolating so they end up with pools of water until the snow melts and allows the water to drain better.

A neighbor that this effected more, who has the drain partially in his yard called the city when it started to collapse and needed to be redone since the city installed it to enable homes to be built there. There are/were 3 original home owners still there so they were going by memory but didn't have any documentation. After almost a year the city found the original plan and yep, it's the cities responsibility not the homeowners to repair.

Once you have a through thaw you need to just dig some shallow channels in the ground to help drain. You can have grass growing there. No need for fancy drainage work, especially if it really only happens once a year when ground is frozen.

So this is the whole swale. Where the tan upside down pot is laying is my catch basin. The original pic I posted with the flooding is all the way in the back of this current pic I posted. I tried leveling out the flooded spots by applying 20+ loads of topsoil but water just collects on top of it whenever it rains. Even going in my yard with a wheelbarrow full of topsoil is damaging to my yard, leaving sunken tire tracks all over.

Build a path, put a ground cover on the rest and keep machinery off of it. We had an area of lawn denuded by landscapers' ride-on mowers because it was a dip where they turned. We ditched the landscapers, put down sod and mow ourselves with walk-behind . End of muddy patch.

That would be normal in Virginia in February. My heavy clay soil will be sodden until mid April in an average year. When Ken posts Newbies, stay out of your garden! he's also reminding me to stay off my squishy lawn.

That looks like a ditch. Still don't follow whether this is just soft ground from the season or if the whole yard is soft even in dry summer, and if your concern is only pooling in the tire ruts or the overall yard. There must be an easement if that is for the neighborhood, you need to figure out how much usable space you have in your yard. Then plan swales, french drains (as needed and whether you are allowed to tie in to the catch basin below the rim), and "landscaping berms" to retard neighbor's sheet flow.

Plant the area between the ditch and the fence with damp-loving natives. Buttonbush. Rhodora, cardinal flower. Queen of the prairies, etc, etc.