Another Delightful Spring Shower

Last week, amongst the stacks of pre-move-out cardboard boxes and rows of rows of random and probably completely unnecessary items we have accumulated over the years, we hunkered down in the hallway and waited for the most recent tempest to pass.

See, for years our neighborhood had been the target of hyper-local unrelentingly violent weather.  A two-mile-wide corridor of blood red on the radar map had us at ground zero more often than not.  During a storm, the nearby high school would report half an inch of rain.  We would get half a foot.   The rare snows would be the same way - one or two inches four miles away, eleven inches at the house.  

Bizarre.

The downstairs hallway was probably the safest place to be at the old homestead in the event of a typical “shower”, or, as we liked to call them "Jeebus-H-Rice-Doesn’t-It-Ever-Just-Freaking-RAIN-Here?"  Of course, no place is 100% secure against an onslaught of the elements but I refused to have the newspaper headline "Run-of-the-Mill Cantaloupe-Sized Hail Slaughters Clearly Unprepared Family - Neighbors Not Surprised" become a reality.

Here’s a typical weather-related news blurb from the useless local weather morons:

A cold front is pushing through which will provide some much needed rain to the area.  Temperatures will drop from a high of 97 degrees to 60 degrees over the next couple of hours which should bring welcome relief from the heat, then climb back to the 90s just in time for yardwork tomorrow.  After the break, how a recent six percent hike on parking fees at the local zoo could affect your wallet this summer.  Stay tuned!

Here’s our typical reaction honed by years of experience:

Bring in the lawn chairs!  Shut the garage door!  Batten down the hatches!  Lash the Escort to the driveway!  Our wills are up to date, right, honey?  RIGHT?!?!  They’re calling for a 20% chance of light rain for parts of the viewing area!!!  Have the neighbors finished that ark yet?

I’m not being fair.  Actually, calling the weather folks “useless” does a complete disservice to things that are genuinely useless.  They would have to really improve significantly in order to be considered for the title “useless”, and, even then, only at a probationary level.

These guys actually think that “parts of the viewing area may get some rain tomorrow” is an actionable piece of data.  Should I mow the lawn now?  Can I wait?  Shouldn’t it matter that the viewing area is, like, the size of New England? If you are truly interested in bringing us up to the minute weather news from your Super Ninja 3000 Quadruple Doppler Radar Technotron or whatever, why do you put the info online in 5 minute increments, and then only when that info is already 15 minutes old?

I guess having the TV on does provide some info, though.  The meaningless lull of the bald guy or the tall guy (depending on what local news station you watch) is comforting as they prattle on and on about unconfirmed reports of dime-sized hail in tiny burgs seventy miles away. It is less soothing when the weather guy’s voice quavers and says “If my wife and family are watching, now would be a good time to take cover in the place we talked about before” (that actually happened about a year ago).

So, as the cul-de-sac out front disappeared in a grey mist of nearly horizontal rain (sigh... again) we calmly and with a tone of utterly transparent joy and exuberance say to our three-year-old "Ok, buddy let's go to the hallway!  You can play with the iPad if you want to!  Sound like fun?  Here you go... just BOY HOWDY WOW!  Did you hear that?  That lightning was super close, huh?! Hahaha!  I can see the smoke from the tree it hit out back!   Cool, huh?  Hey, why don't I go get your sleeping bag - it'll be just like camping out!  Awesome!  I'll go get it right after I change my underwear!  Can I get you a snack?"

I mentioned before that we are in the process of moving.  The house sold faster than we hoped and much, much faster than we expected. The last item in the list of things to do was the septic tank inspection - it passed, of course, but the real test was the eight (yes, eight) inches of rain that came almost immediately afterwards.  Again, it passed with flying colors.  Or at least it passed with a complete lack of floating colors.

The ditch was filled with quick-moving rainwater runoff from the forest behind the house so the boy and I made a tinfoil boat, peopled it with a multi-colored ping-pong ball "family", and set it on it's merry way.  In his head it is out to sea by now.  In reality, it probably got hung up on a fallen branch shortly after it turned the first corner where it will stay for the next 500 years when it will be discovered and its "purpose" grossly misinterpreted by archeologists.

Hmm... In retrospect maybe I should have spaced out the last two paragraphs a bit...

Other than the rain, the “local viewing area” sponsored a waterspout that turned into a tornado.  Depending on which news outlet you went to, it caused either “minor damage to the facade of a yacht club” or “completely leveled the city of Hampton, chuckling evilly and salting the fields in its mighty wake”.  Since I drive through that area every day, I am guessing it was more on the “exciting but inconvenient” side of that coin.

Well, regardless, I write this now from the comfort of a single-bedroom efficiency (more on that later), and I see they are calling for showers for “the area” over the next three days.  I wonder if I should contact our old neighbors and ask if I can lend a hand hauling gopher wood or converting board-feet to cubits or something...