Websnark: You know what's cool? The Emergency Broadcast System. It's so cool when it's actually really an emergency.

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Eric: You know what's cool? The Emergency Broadcast System. It's so cool when it's actually really an emergency.

It is a sodden day, in our State of Emergency.

For those of you unconcerned about the daily lives of your cheerful blogging cadre beyond what you see crop up in your RSS aggregator, Livejournal Friendslist or web site link, one of the cheerful writers for this site lives in New Hampshire. New Hampshire, which is currently in day 12 of 40 of Noah's Flood 2006 Brought To You By Pepsi. Large chunks of this state, of Massachusetts and of Maine are under water, with dams straining, sewers overflowing and backing into the rivers that have surged, and water tables saturating all over.

Interestingly enough, even though I live essentially next to a lake, I'm fine. My home is on high ground, my workplace is up a sloping hill. Lake Winnepausakee would have to rise like 20 meters before it became an issue, and if we had a sixty foot high wave of water come into town, we're officially into Waterworld territory.

But, there is impact. For one thing, there have been power flickers and even outages, which is to be expected since much of the electrical grid is now being exposed to our buddy water. For another, there are weird troubles with the internet -- which might have something to do with several of our backbones running through places like Manchester, which is among the hardest hit areas in New Hampshire. (Not to mention places like Peabody and Haverhill, in Massachusetts, which as near as we can tell are now lakes.)

Walking in to work, I noticed the ground was one big sponge now, though, and torrents of water sheet down every road and walkway, pooling wherever the ground bowls slightly. The earth is saturated here, and there is no where for the water to go except on the surface or sheeting down any incline. My feet are still wet.

And still the rain falls. It falls steadily. It falls hard.

Dover, where friends of mine live and good coffee can be had, is flooded. Roadways crumble under the onslaught of overflowed rivers. Rochester, the "Lilac City," is essentially drowned right now. And having been in Maine on Sunday (Mother's Day, don't you know), I'm at least somewhat surprised my trip home didn't involve driving through the Saco River. As it is, I assume my town is an island, cut off on all sides by roadways obscured by water.

And yet, life goes on. Though the state is in a State of Emergency, that emergency hasn't really hit my town, where things are pretty much normal. I'm at work today, and have no reason to think I won't stay at work the normal hours. Really, the new 13" MacBooks are a bigger deal in the office than the floodwaters. I have light and comfort, shelter and hot coffee, and after work I have to go buy cat food. When the biggest issue facing you in a State of Emergency is remembering you need a bag of Iams for Adult Cats, life is officially going on.

Still, there is some indication we should get used to such things. There have been rumblings that this year's wildcat hurricane season might trawl up the Atlantic and nail the Northeast. I'm certain readers in the Southeastern United States will think it's our turn, God Damn It, and they might be right. Certainly, it seems that when an area gets hit with extreme weather these days, that extreme weather comes in waves, not in isolated incidents. And the Nationwide (and Worldwide) incidence of extreme weather seems to be spiking higher, not leveling off.

So.

Stay dry. Have some coffee. Sit back. Look at the new MacBooks. And relax.

It's just a State of Emergency, after all.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at May 16, 2006 10:00 AM

Comments

Comment from: kirabug posted at May 16, 2006 10:41 AM

Wow. I was totally unaware. I'll think positive thoughts for all of you up north.

Comment from: Wereling posted at May 16, 2006 11:06 AM

What's amazing to me is how CALM everyone's been about the whole thing. For those that don't know, this is the second time this year that New Hampshire has had flood conditions (we had one in the western part of the state last October). Given that most of eastern New Hampshire is suffering from the worst flood conditions since 1954, you'd think there'd be people panicking inthe streets.

So far though, I haven't really seen it happen. maybe it's because New Hampshire's hilly enough that getting to high ground isn't really a problem, but I can't help thinking that people could be taking this a LOT worse.

Fortunately, I live in Dublin, which is essentially built on to the side of a hill, so I've been largely untouched by both floods.

Comment from: Copper Hamster posted at May 16, 2006 11:12 AM

Seems people are having a better reaction than people around here would be.

"It's gonna rain at least 4" Joe Bob."
"Well John, let's start buildin us an ark."
And meanwhile weatherman on TV: Get to HIGH GROUND IMMEDIATLY! 4" of rain in 2 days can cause massive flash flooding! Also, stay off peaks. During rain you can have thunder which comes with lightning that will kill ALL OF US! And tornados.. don't forget the tornadoes seek shelter immedietly ..."

You get the idea.

Comment from: 32_footsteps posted at May 16, 2006 12:27 PM

Seeing as I'm also in the path of Rain-a-thon 2006, I've got my own opinions on all this.

First off, I love how State of Emergency apparently doesn't mean as much as it used to. I was under the impression that it was supposed to mean all non-essential state workers would get to stay home. I've been disabused of that notion, although the union better start fighting on that point. My morning commutes have been ugly.

Second, it's kind of weird seeing how people react to this. I went to high school in South Florida, were large patches of land are already below sea level and saturated with liquid. Two inches of rain would cause storm drains to overflow, and you could start rafting down the street at three. So I'm mostly non-plussed about this, although there's a minor nervous energy amongst others I know.

But of course, it's really controlled well everywhere except on the network news. Watching that, you'd be convinced that New England is headed for a disaster on a scale never before told in human history. You'd see many shots of brave newscasters wearing their ugly raincoats outside and trying to convince you how bad it is when you can clearly see standing water with no water drops hitting it.

It's nasty a few miles north of Boston up through southern New Hampshire, but seriously, New England has been through much worse. Heck, I've seen snowfalls in the last two winters that were more severe than this rain.

As I've said back in my high school days, wake me when it hits category 3.

Comment from: Batou posted at May 16, 2006 12:46 PM

Glad to hear Eric B is all right - it occurred to me this morning as I read the stories on CNN "Hey, isn't Mr. Websnark Dude in NH?"

I worried about flooding when I shopped for a house, and chose accordingly. Now I don't have to worry - if we get river water in our basement, I'll already have built my boat and grown gills :^)

Comment from: coldcut posted at May 16, 2006 12:52 PM

You didn't grow up in tornado country.

"Emergency broadcast alert's gone off again."

"Can anyone actually see a tornado?"

"Nope."

"Fuck it."

Comment from: 32_footsteps posted at May 16, 2006 1:03 PM

Tornadoes? Bah. Those are just side effects to hurricanes. And I've slept through at least two that I know of. I've also managed to sleep through a 5.0 earthquake.

Comment from: Paul Gadzikowski posted at May 16, 2006 1:05 PM

I lost my junior high school to a tornado in 1975. It was at the end of a string of related events that, a year later, I first began drawing a cartoon a day. (And Coffman thinks he's going to win the Daily Grind.)

Comment from: WestRider posted at May 16, 2006 1:42 PM

We could use some of that rain over here on the west coast. I don't think we've gotten any here in town yet this month.

It really feels more like mid-August than mid-May here. The weather keeps on like this, and the Evergreen State ain't gonna be green by the end of the summer.

Comment from: miyaa posted at May 16, 2006 2:16 PM

Arrgggghhhh. Sorry, but the weather geek in me has to comment...

1) Isn't it interesting how so wet and so dry the country can be at the same time? According to the USDA/NWS (United States Dept. of Agriculture, National Weather Service), a very large part of the Southwest, Great Plains and almost all the way up the East Coast are in some sort of Drought conditions. The most severe are in Arizona, New Mexico and Southern portions of Texas. (You probably had to deal with water rationing if you were on South Padre Island during Spring Break.) Large portions of Florida haven't had rain in a long while, which was almost unheard of in the 1980's and 90's.

2) There's a reason why you should be worried about 4" (10.16 cm) of rain. That's enough rain to push a car down the street, and you probably in it. See, water has a unique property of having increased pressure the more there is of it on the ground. Get 4" of rain over a pretty good size area of land, and that little amount is enought to move a car across. Add to that the genesis of most flooding situations (creeks, rivers, etc.) and that body of water is more like 15" now. That's more than enough to move a car down the street and you trapped in it. And the worst thing is that it's really hard to gage the depth of a flooded street. (Hench the Dept. of Transportion/NWS slogan when it comes to driving on flooded streets: Turn Around, Don't Drown. Not catchy, I know. But it works.)

3) Here where I'm from (Missouri), it's been nothing but really cool with unseasonable cool temperatures (where the West Coast has been broiled). It seems to me that this rather wacky season will lead to a really hot (and probably dry) summer. Is it yet another wacky result from Global Warming/Global Dimming? Hmm...

Global Dimming, by the way, is the process that the same pollutant that cause Global Warming are also preventing as much sunlight to reach the earth, thus reducing the transevaporation process and ultimately shifting rainfall patterns around the world. It's quite an interesting problem.
And yet, New Englanders are experiencing what Seattlites (sp?) usually deal with. Seriously, neither extreme is good in long-term situations.

Okay, I'll shut up now.

Comment from: kirabug posted at May 16, 2006 2:28 PM

Cool, miyaa, thanks for the weather lesson :)

Around here, we (the Philadelphia region) flood about once every year to two years. Usually in different spots, though Manayunk is prone, and Admiral Wilson Blvd has picked up the nickname "Admiral Wilson Canal".

I'm a mile from the Schuylkill (skooo-kill for you non-natives) River, but it's a mile uphill. A large portion of Chester County will be wiped off the map before we flood. On the other hand, my mom gets trapped at my house at least twice a year on her way home from work because the creeks between here and there have flooded.

As for the reticent New Englander reaction, well, unless the folks up that way have changed since my mom lived in Saranac Lake, you could title this whole event:

Flooding 2006: We Don't Have To Shovel It.

Comment from: Pooga posted at May 16, 2006 3:04 PM

I lost my junior high school to a tornado in 1975.

Paul, while I'm fairly certain there were other tornados in 1975, I must ask if you happen to hail from the Omaha area. The reason I ask is because my junior high (well, the junior high that I would attend in the 80s) was hit by a fairly noteworthy tornado in 1975. Noteworthy because there were three that touched down in the city, and that the one that hit the junior high created a swath of destruction straight down a main business district of the city.

Even today, Omahans talk about both that tornado and the blizzard of 1975.

Comment from: Copper Hamster posted at May 16, 2006 3:51 PM

Oh I understand that 4" of rain can be dangerous, given the right conditions. It's just 4" of rain, over 48 hours, when we havn't had any rain for a week, is no big deal.

Coldcut, I'm not that casual, but I am not quite as... hysterical as some people are.

Comment from: Paul Gadzikowski posted at May 16, 2006 4:16 PM

Pooga: Yes, I was a student at Lewis & Clark Junior High (now Lewis & Clark Middle School) at the time of its destruction in the tornado of 1975. It was a Tuesday afternoon and, if the newspaper staff meeting had lasted another half hour, I'd've been among those students still in the building at the time. I left Omaha for college and other things but I'm back now since my wife attended Creighton law school 2002-2005. According to a radio report I heard on its 30th anniversary, that tornado was the eighth worst in history.

Did you notice there's someone from Omaha who's one of the new Fleen writers? If I can't find sf fandom in Omaha (outside of Magic players in the comic shop backrooms), maybe I can find webcomic culture.

Comment from: Elizabeth McCoy posted at May 16, 2006 4:50 PM

Glad to see I'm not the only one who's muttering things like "12 out of 40 and counting." Happily, there's a boat store down the street.

There was also sun briefly today. I should put seed in the birdfeeder.

Comment from: Kirath posted at May 16, 2006 8:44 PM

Hehehe, I live in Manchester. Thankfully I am up on a hill so I haven't had to deal with any flooding. If it is raining in the morning I may well have to give the big middle finger to my morning commute. (I can work from home if I need to and there's no reason I should have to drive to Bedford, Mass. in this weather.)

Rain like this back in Galveston would have put me totally underwater, though.

Comment from: Michael Weaver posted at May 17, 2006 4:35 PM

Downeast Maine here, and fortunately outside the flood zone (that's mostly in York county). Still, from what I hear some places got hit really hard. I really hope things can go back to normal soon.

You know, as opposed to 28 days from now...

Comment from: Kudilu posted at May 17, 2006 6:23 PM

Paul - there is a sf/fantasy fandom in Omaha - they are just well-hidden. i was lucky enough to grow up in it. :)

don't know if it's really your thing, but there is actually a gaming convention in the omaha area (it was in omaha till this last one, the last one was at the mid-america center) in october - it's called Nuke-con. (www.nuke-con.com) it's at the MAC again this year, oct 6-8.

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