Saturday, July 26, 2008

Hurricane Dolly

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In August 1992 I was living in South Louisiana. My house sat right next to a bayou and was about 5 miles (8 km) from the Gulf of Mexico. The elevation was far less than ten feet (3 meters) above mean sea level.

Since I had been raised in the high desert, I had never seen a hurricane. So I was excited when it looked like I might get to see hurricane Andrew. As it turned out I got to experience a direct hit from a category 5 hurricane. Wikipedia says, “Hurricane Andrew is the second-most-destructive hurricane in U.S. history, and the last of three Category 5 hurricanes that made U.S. landfall during the 20th century, after the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 and Hurricane Camille in 1969.”

The day after it hit I was helping my next door neighbor. He had his tractor out, and he was putting back up wooden power poles that had blown down on his property. Just a few weeks before hurricane Andrew hit I was at the mall in Lafayette, Louisiana and I had bought what at the time seemed like a quite expensive beautiful dark green boating jacket made by Nautica. It was sort of a combination wind breaker/rain jacket.

So I wore this brand new Nautica jacket to be out in the rain while helping my neighbor clean up damage caused by hurricane Andrew. And dogone if it didn’t bleed horribly the green color onto my shirt! I was outraged. I thought Nautica was a good brand intended to be worn in wet conditions, and the price was not at all cheap. Oh well. In my mind this jacket became my hurricane jacket. Today it is sixteen years later, and although it is getting a bit worn, I still have that Nautica jacket.

Several days ago the category 2 hurricane Dolly hit the south Texas coast. Now after travelling more than 700 miles inland (1,144 km) sweet little Dolly has reached El Paso, Texas. And it is raining. Big time rain. It has been raining hard for hours. The National Weather Service has issued flash flood warnings.
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Here in the desert any rain at all is appreciated, and this is like manna from heaven!

To the chili farmers up near Hatch, New Mexico this will be an absolute disaster. Since all of the water to grow their crops is provided by irrigation from the Rio Grande river, any rain at all can flood fields and rot the crops. And continuous, sustained heavy rain like this can even make the river or its levees overflow.
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This morning when I took my little furry black partner out in the very wet and flooded desert, I wore my old green Nautica hurricane jacket. And my dog, who generally likes water about as much as a cat does, went wild with happiness. Running around, splashing, and jumping up on me.

What a nice change of weather!
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LINK: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Andrew
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