Austin Rains
Finally. It's raining. It has been a very dry winter so far. We were about to irrigate, which we do not normally do in winter. Let's just hope it adds up to a good soaking.
One of the things I enjoy most about Texas is the rain. Not that there's much of it. But when it comes, it can be fierce and exciting. Several times each year we have a rain that is thrillingly intense, a thunderous, washing, drumming downpour.
I must hasten to add that I fear for and sympathize with the many who suffer from these rains. We read about the lovely low-lying areas downriver of us where people can be driven from their homes. Central Texans cast their lot a long time ago with surface water control. Now the huge rains raise the spector of strategic release of water to relieve the pressure on the dams. Some unfortunate official must consult with the hapless forecasters and decide between the dangers above and the dangers below.
Then there are the scary stories of people swept away in cars. Now, if you have lived in Texas long, you have to be a little foolish to drive into water if you can't see the road underneath. Low water crossings are often steep dips over stream beds, and if you misjudge how deep the dip is that is submerged in a flooding stream, you can be snatched off the road in a flash.
These crossings don't have guard rails and curbs. It is a caution that the reason they don't is because a flooding stream will rip off a little road's sides in a flash, battering off the tough parts with tumbling debris. Once you and your car join and become the tumbling debris, you are lucky to get out alive (and usually don't).
The pictures of Austin rain are from the great Memorial Day flood of 1981. We were still living at Caswell, in Hyde Park. That day, we went birdwatching along Shoal Creek. It was about 8:30 a.m., already hot and humid. Craig called my attention to the clouds piled menacingly, or so he thought, on the horizon.
They didn't look like much to me, huge steamy cumulus low in the west. But Craig, weatherman that he is, recognized how unusual they were. Wow, he kept saying, they must be sixty thousand feet tall and it's not even 9 o'clock. I was more interested in a yellow chat.
Later that day Shoal Creek leapt its traces and destroyed the original Whole Foods on 9th Street. "Whole Floods," it was affectionately called after that. Not many people outside Austin know that the mighty Whole Foods chain got its first little store mopped up for free by loyal customers who pitched in to save it after the Memorial Day flood.
Continue: Lake Pommel
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