Tuesday it rained.
And of course when I say rained, you’ll understand that I mean torrential down pour - an occurrence that Phoenix wasn’t set up for. The amount of water that came down all at once was quite astonishing by Arizona standards. Back in Oregon, I would have looked out the window, seen the dreary looking sky and the gallons of water coming down and simply sighed before turning back to my work, because, we all know that where I grew up has 350 days of rain (and if you didn’t before, you do now).
The people who originally planned this city apparently didn’t know the point of a drainage system… in most parts of the city, there’s isn’t one and in the parts were storm drains can be seen, they fill up and clog quickly after the rain starts. I watched a coworker walk to his car through the parking lot and laughed as he pulled up his pants, slogging through the ankle deep water in his expensive designer shoes.
The street on which my office is set is far from flat, it’s high point is along the center line and then it curves downward toward the curbs. The industrial sector is older and thus… no storm drains on the side streets. Once we got to the main drag things were better. They installed a drainage system for the light rail… they can’t have that getting backed up.
When the hurricane-like storm began, it was quite sudden. It was beautiful out, with the exception of the dark sky to the west, but the storm came at us from the south, and ruined the day. At its worst, the rain was mixed with hail and visibility dropped to four feet.
Can I just say this: 68degrees is cold when you’ve been living with 100degrees for the past few months.
When it came time to go home, I was happy for two things. A) I wasn’t driving and B) we drive a bright yellow car (not that that has stopped people from trying to hit us before…). Here’s the thing about Phoenix, People don’t know how to drive in the rain – heaven help us all if it ever snows. You have two types of Phoenix rain drivers… those who are too cautions and those who don’t change their driving habits at all. Both are bad news, bears.
It took us an hour to get home last night (that’s over twice the normal time) and that was due in part to the number of accidents on the freeway and the number of boneheads on the surface streets. Couple idiotic drivers with pour drainage and you’re bound to see an increase of flooded engines at your local mechanic. The people weaving in and out of traffic were probably the most likely to cause an accident. I’ve always wondered why people don’t understand that breaking time increases when water’s involved…
Once we got out of the traffic heavy areas (aka, closer to home) we started to really notice the effect of the water… A wash crossed the road on our route and as the water surged through I noticed something caught in the guardrail with water coursing around it. You’ll never guess, in fact, I almost didn’t believe it myself at first. It was a chair… a leather chair. The kind that goes with a sofa loveseat set… and there it was in the midst of the floe.
Perhaps the one bad thing about living on a mountain is that when it rains like this… it produces runoff. Aka, the mountain threatens to come down on you in a tower of sludge. There were rocks and mud all over the road up the mountain and great clefts in the once smooth mountainside. Luckily, our apartment was still intact when we arrived and our dog seemed no worse for the raging storm outside.
However… an unwanted guest tagged along when we opened the door. An itty bitty scorpion was swept into the house.
I promptly screamed like the little girl I am and hopped into the stairwell while Earl, brave man that he is, saw where my panicked pointing was directed and stomped the evil, exoskeleton-ed creature. My hero!
