Rainy Days

We've had a lot of really rainy afternoons lately. No hurricanes or tropical storms, just afternoon showers that don't know when to quit. Yesterday rain was blown under my front door, making a puddle about four feet wide. I didn't notice at the time because I was trying to quickly finish a spreadsheet on my laptop, which required ignoring very loud lightning strikes. Did you know that Florida is the #1 state for lightning related deaths? And not just by a little bit either - almost triple the deaths of the runner-up. (Take that, Texas!) I was just glad that I was able to finish the report and send it in without losing power. In most neighborhoods all the power lines are above ground on lines, so the lights will wink on and off until the storm passes. 

After the storms ended yesterday, our local road was a lake, as usual. You can see that the flooding covered half of my lawn and half of the neighbor's lawn across the street. We don't have a sewer system, so this happens after every intense rain. All this water was dumped in about an hour and a half. But two hours later it was all gone. The water sinks into the soil and eventually makes it down to the Biscayne Aquifer. Streams of bubbles rise up from the sidewalk seams and cracks in the asphalt. The water is filtered by the limestone of the aquifer, and becomes a part of the drinking supply.

I had to go out in the evening and although the roads were no longer flooded everything was still pretty soggy. People in Florida tend to wear sandals all the time. You could try to hide from the rain with a trench coat and galoshes, but you would just get sweaty in five minutes. It is much more convenient to just let the rain get you. I keep an old towel in my car and a handkerchief in my purse. If I get splashed in my sandals, I just kick them off, wipe off the water, and I'm perfectly comfortable again.