There Will Come Soft Rains

We knew there was a chance of rain yesterday--a chance of rain all week-end, but never more than a 50% chance.  It's winter, and under old climate models, we don't get much rain in the winter.

We certainly don't get rains like we got yesterday.  Under old climate models, we only saw those rains when a tropical depression/storm/hurricane came through.

Yesterday morning, I thought, what's that noise?  It was about 7 and the first of the rains came through.  Heavy downpour, over quickly.

We had similar rains of varying length throughout the day.  At one point, when one of the weather sites said we wouldn't have any more rain, we ventured out.  We drove through flooded streets to get my 8 year old nephew a wetsuit.  He thought it was super cool to drive through so much water.

Some kids get Disney World, but we know how to show a boy a really good time!

On the way home, the skies opened up just after we got our grocery shopping done.  We moved both cars into the driveway because it was clear that the pumps that were installed to keep streets from flooding were not going to keep up with the amount of rain that fell.

As I said, once we used to see those rains only when an out of the ordinary system came through.  Now, it can be a typical summer day.

We worry about sea level rise, and we should.  Our house will likely be under water in 100 years.  But before that, we will be dealing with periodic flooding--and by periodic, I mean quarterly or monthly or weekly.  Along the way, we'll have to figure out how to get fresh water as salt water intrudes into our aquifers.

I titled this post after the Ray Bradbury story; I thought about using that Bob Dylan title "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall."  Both would be appropriate. 

In my younger years, I worried about nuclear war.  I still do.  But the more immediate threat these days seems to be the changes that we've made to our planet, changes that won't be reversed soon, and certainly not in our lifetimes.

I think of that lonely house in the Bradbury story.  My house too will some day be lonely as scuba divers swim in its ruins and marvel at the folly of the great civilization that build such structures so close to the shoreline.