Jim's Place

Floods in the Desert

As many of you know, Lucy and I moved from Tallahassee to the desert because of Lucy's allergies and especially how bad they would get whenever it rained (which happened quite often in Tally).  So, we moved to El Paso with an average ANNUAL rainfall of 8-9 inches.  Well, about 2 weeks ago when most of the nation was suffering through a drought, the rains came to El Paso.  Some areas of the city got more than 15 inches in a couple of days.  Yes, that's double the annual average in 2 days.  Needless to say, El Paso's drainage system wasn't equipped for that, the ground was rock hard and the damns and levies overflowed.  The result was the worst flooding in 100 or 500 years (depending on which report you read) in this area.  Thousands have been flooded out of their homes.

After about a week of rain, we did get a week to help dry the city out.  But, it started again yesterday, with about 1.5 inches in some parts of the city which was enough to cause some more flooding (in some of the same neighborhoods that were hit the worst a couple of weeks ago).  And, now it is coming down very hard again as I'm typing this. 

I had been involved in a couple of large projects and just hadn't had the time to keep up blogging (plus when you live a boring life, there isn't much to write about), but hopefully I'll be able to post a little more regularly.

posted by Jim @ 1:36 PM