Records you don’t want to break [NOT 26/7/22]

Hi, friends.

We had record breaking rain starting about 1am here. We got almost 11 inches of rain in about 8 hours.

Anyways, widespread flash flooding. I know several people who lost cars and now have massive damage to homes. At one point all 4 interstates were closed due to flooding.

Floodwaters have been starting to recede since around lunch time but fuck me I’ve never seen it like this. The fire departments got out the boats and had to do some water rescues. Over 150 people had to be evacuated from an apartment complex because of flash flooding. Not to mention all the rescues from people trapped in cars. A few animal shelters also had to frantically relocate a ton of animals because they flooded and had to evacuate the pets.

https://www.riverfronttimes.com/stlouis/extreme-and-dangerous-flash-flooding-pounds-st-louis-photos-video/Slideshow/38174264/38174518

Anyways, there was a lot of flooding down the hill from me and I don’t know how it is yet for local folks.

Also, Coldwater Creek up in North County flooded way up and over its banks all the fuckover. That’s the creek with all the radioactive waste in it from improper disposal back in the 1970s. So yeah that sucks too.

Stay safe, friends.

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16 Comments

  1. Wow, that’s pretty crazy!  Glad you are safe.  We are supposed to have 90+ heat here for the next several days.  I’m close to the water and have a basement that stays pretty cool so not too bad but less than 10% of people here have air conditioning.  Every year when they predict a heat wave all the stores sell out of fans and air cons.  So dumb!  In our area people believe in climate change but I’m sure around you it is just a “freak 100 year storm”.  Yeah, they just seem to happen all the time now though?

  2. I woke up with the power out. Not really something to shout about — especially since it came back on a bit more than a couple of hours before I started work. I wouldn’t have totally minded a day off, all told, because yesterday all the Costa Rica-based interpreters were off because of a holiday, so the rest of us had to pick up the slack, which had me ending up taking more calls in one day than I ever have before — speaking of records you don’t want to break.

    I managed to head out beforehand to grab a sandwich, and at first glance I didn’t see too much setting this morning apart from other rainy days around here. Of course, after I got there, I saw the pictures of the MetroLink station that I’d passed, which was flooded up to the platforms. And a few hours into my shift, my friend let me know that there was a drowning not too far from where I was, not too long before I was there. (It seems to have happened in a parking lot where a lot of people might have left their cars to go see the Psychedelic Furs show at the Pageant, on their tour for a new-ish album that unbelievably was recorded here, at least in part, and bears the rather on-the-nose title Made of Rain. I probably would’ve been there, too, if I’d had more money, more time and less work. But that’s another story. . . .)

  3. I recently watched the HBOMax miniseries “Years After Years,” which was probably recommended on a Saturday “Brain Drain.” I don’t really like dystopian futurism but this six-episode series (so, easily binged in one go) is in the very near future and it is entirely believable. I hope, for example, that anyone who harbors hatred for the migrants crossing the Channel in those little rubber dinghies watches it.

    There’s also a minor plotline about climate change, and this being Britain in the near future it concerns flooding and also this peculiarly British notion that some people are living in privately owned houses that are too big for them. This is 100% true. Today, in real life, older people, empty nesters, are being encouraged to downsize and put their houses on the market to free up inventory and alleviate the housing crisis. It’s daft (as the British would say) and I doubt many people who have lived in their homes for decades are paying any attention to this, but the media is (to talk about what a daft idea it is in opinion columns and on talk shows.)

    In “Years After Years” the flooding is so common and so destructive that the semi-Fascist populist government institutes laws whereby Brits with spare bedrooms are forced to take in other Brits flooded out of their homes. This, too, has precedent: During World War II, when London was being blitzed by the Jerries, one million residents were farmed out all over the kingdom, sometimes under duress from the evacuees and/or their hosts. At the same time, there was an all-hands-on-deck national conscription. 9/10 men were sent into the military, but 1/10 were sent to work in mines, chiefly in the north and in Wales, to keep the country running albeit it at a very reduced scale. That was horrific for everyone involved, because coal-mining is among the worst jobs still performed by human labor. Not only that, the billeting of the conscripts was in private homes near the coal mines, and often the families had sons, brothers, uncles, fathers, whatever, actually fighting on the front lines when they could have stayed home and worked in the nearby mines themselves.

    Off-topic. Best of luck to all our fellow citizens in the Show Me State.

    • Yeah my house is about 700 sq ft with 2 small bedrooms, 1 of which is tiny. Like anything larger than a twin bed and a dresser wouldn’t fit really.

      But also – I wanted a small house because it’s just me. What the fuck am I going to do with some big expensive house? Be house-poor and miserable but look successful?

    • Yeah watching the news was like when you’re watching footage of heavy hurricane rainfall and flooding. We’re not familiar really here with water rescues and while fire departments worked it out, it was a different coordination than normal. Like the fire department up by where that apartment complex had to be evacuated? The chief said they only have 1 boat because duh why do they need boats much. So it was a lot of getting on the radios and being like which firehouses have boats and can they show up ASAP.

      • Glad to hear that both you & Perdido are safe!

        I heard about it on MPR today, as I drove to work, and you guys were my first thought.  Sorry about the wet basement, but I’m SO glad you’re both ok!💖💞💝

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