Thursday, June 28, 2007

Wet!

In breaking news, I apparently have a hernia.

That was a pun, obviously.

Normally, that would be kind of a headline item for the day, but today, it's barely worth mentioning--I thought I strained a stomach muscle a few weeks ago (during a frog kick in the pool, believe it or not), it didn't seem to get any better, and I found a small bulge in my lower abdomen. Off to the doctor and the inevitable diagnosis was given.

For the real news down here, I have to go back to Monday and work forward.

I mentioned a while back that we'd been having an unbelievable amount of rain--depending on where you live in Austin, it may have been the rainiest first half of the year in recorded history. We're over our average annual rainfall--for the year--by three inches.

When I picked up Eli 5.10 at camp on Monday, it was pouring. And since we're all idiots about the rain down here, all I have is a light Gore-Tex rain jacket. Which I put on Eli, of course, and it kept him totally dry.

By the time we got to the car, though, which wasn't very far, I was dripping wet. Literally.

I decided not to have lunch in the central part of town, because I was concerned about flooding if it rained like that for another hour. So we headed north, to see Mr. Cheese, because I knew we could get home from there.

It rained as hard as I've ever seen it the entire time we drove north (I stayed off the highway and took a neighborhood road that runs parallel). And by the time we walked into Chuck E. Cheese, I was dripping wet--again. I literally wrang water out of my shirt during a trip to the bathroom.

After that, other than a little kid yelling "WAHOO! WAHOO! WAHOO!" as he ran past with a string of tickets, and a women at the Pop-a-Shot machine who must have played for the Boston Celtics, our visit was not unusual.

Outside, it kept raining.

I've been thinking that we were at a pretty high risk for flooding (and we are)--the ground is completely saturated. And it's supposed to rain for several more days.

Then I saw what happened to Marble Falls last night [note: I wrote this on Wednesday, so this happened Tuesday night]. Marble Falls is a small town about (I'm guessing) thirty miles or so as the crow flies from Austin.

They got 18 inches of rain last night. In SIX HOURS.

You can see the story here and here.

I saw that storm on radar, and I noticed how it seemed to be settling instead of moving quickly like most storms down here do. Incredible.

Plus we're at 80%, 50%, 40%, 50%, and 50% chances of rain for the next five days. Man the lifeboats.

[note: and as I get ready to post this at mid-day Thursday, it's pouring. Again.]

Site Meter