RAIN, RAIN, GO AWAY!!

Tropical Storm Debby as of 12:30pm on Tuesday 6/26/12

No doubt you've been hearing in the news about tropical storm Debby doing all sorts of flooding and tornadoes and other unpleasantries to northern and central Florida.   Surprise!  North-central Florida is where Al and I live!

So how have we been faring while you've been watching news films of submerged cars and hotel swimming pools being flooded by storm surge? (weren't those films impressive?)

Relax.  We're just fine.  We're in the center of the state and fortunately far enough south that we've missed the brunt of this storm, which as I type is moving at a snail's pace between Florida and Georgia, happily dumping over a foot of rain on them.  They're the places getting flooded.

I have to admit that on Sunday we "enjoyed" some impressively heavy rain throughout the entire day which was apparently Debby's leading edge, and though it was windy around here it wasn't strong enough to be concerning.  Once the rain stopped we had a long enough dry period that the ground soaked up the water before the next series of thunderstorms occurred.   I'm told we're now going to have intermittent thunderstorms for the rest of the week.  Thanks, Deb.

Quite a way south of us there were a few tornadoes, which scare the @%^#! out of me but the nearest one was just southeast of Tampa and we're comfortably far from there.  Nobody told us Florida got tornadoes, by the way and I intend to send a strongly worded letter of protest to the governor about it - if I can find out who the devil he is...

Actually the rain was much appreciated by some of the local neighbors (seen below) because all the many catch-basins in the area filled way up with water for them to swim and quack in. 

This is a local brace of ducks who found several swimming venues in the neighborhood.  I don't know what they were waiting for - maybe the lifeguard or something...



Anyway, I thought you'd like to see two of the local catch basins which in the winter are either nearly dry or entirely dry, now brimming with rainfall.  Actually, the water level has RECEDED in both of these since Sunday, and it's only Tuesday.  Yes, as you can see, they're attached to drainage pipes so they can't actually overflow.  They're designed in such a way that the water filling the streets and roadways is diverted to collect in the basins, preventing roadway flooding and water dripping into our basement, which is especially fortunate, since we do not HAVE a basement.






 

This one is just outside our community's back gate.
It's about 30 feet deep right now, though in winter
the water is shallow at the very bottom.





This catch basin is within the community and is totally dry in
the winter.  It, too is about 30 feet deep and the water was
higher yesterday.  You can see the ducks having a swim in it.

So, for now we're doing okay.   Other than some residual windiness from Debby and a collection of short-lived rainstorms we seem to be back to our "normal" weather pattern, which, like Camelot, shows us some amount of sunshine in the morning, followed by rainy patches in the afternoon and evening.  The stories about it raining over your house and being dry at your neighbor's across the street are true.  Very weird but typically Floridian.  

Gotta go now - I want to dash out to the mailbox before the next rainstorm begins!