8-13-04

["Akili"] has a tale to tell.

says ["Cal"], "evening"

["Shelly"] says, "Spill the beans."

["Akili"] rumbles lightly, "So I left to go home, about 15 minutes after I usually leave the office."

["Calin"] is listening.

["Akili"] rumbles lightly, "My area was overcast. Once I got down below the foothills, I could see thick, bulging, dark clouds in the distance beyond the next ridge, in the direction I was driving. And beyond it was kind of a slate-blue blankness. Zero visibility."

["Calin"] says, "Whoa."

["Akili"] rumbles lightly, "If you ever saw [wiki:The_Perfect_Storm_%28film%29 The Perfect Storm], when they decide to turn the boat around and head right into the heart of the storm, it was somewhat similar to that, only not quite so black. The clouds were strobing every few seconds for as far wide as I could see."

["Shelly"] says, "Wow."

["Calin"] says, "Tell me you got some video of that."

["Akili"] rumbles lightly, "I was driving home, sorry. It's hard to take video while in my car... and I don't keep my video camera in my call all the time. I wish I'd had it this time, though."

says ["Cal"], "wow"

["Calin"] nods.

["Akili"] rumbles lightly, "So anyway, I drive into it. Gotta go home, after all. At first it's really kinda keen to see the white strobes turn into actual lightning bolts. And then I see that the clouds are just *piled* up, and that there are huge gobs of low-lying clouds that I can *see* moving... they raced right over my car several times when I was at stoplights."

["Akili"] rumbles lightly, "Not much rain, though. Just areas of strong wind, and lightning at least every five seconds from somewhere in my field of view."

["Calin"] says, "Spooky."

["Shelly"] says, "Cool."

["Akili"] rumbles lightly, "I tell you, several times I was worried about funnel clouds, from the way some of them were shaped, and how they were moving."

["Akili"] rumbles lightly, "You could *see* the ridge in the sky where two ridges of pressure were colliding, and that's where the lightning was the worst."

["Calin"] says, "That's so awesome."

["Shelly"] says, "Sounds similar to one of the nights when I was up in Calgary."

["Akili"] rumbles lightly, "So anyway, I continue driving. It eventually starts raining, not very hard at first, and then a little harder. As I get closer to home, I can see areas of the road strewn with gravel, which means there was quite a bit of water rushling along the road."

["Akili"] rumbles lightly, "I eventually leave the colliding storm front behind, leaving most of the sky a darker blue color, although lightning is still flashing everywhere. Traffic is also much worse than usual, big surprise. About 20 minutes from home, usually, I come across the first light that's just flashing red. Takes forever, but I finally make it through. I eventually cross a couple more lights, then go down the long straightaway until the next light."

["Akili"] rumbles lightly, "One of the streams running right across the road I don't even see. It splashes water that goes over the hood of my car, and over the top of my windshield."

["Cal"] puzzles, "you take a detour through florida?"

["Akili"] rumbles lightly, "So now I'm a little more cautious. There are a few other small ones I cross on the way over... and then I see that the next major intersection - two lanes each road, all with dedicated left-turn-lanes - is also flashing red. To heck with *that*."

["Akili"] rumbles lightly, "I flip a U when I get to the last intersection before the light, cross through that stream again, and take a shortcut."

["Akili"] rumbles lightly, "Fifty feet down I'm forced to concede that what is in front of me IS a river. There ain't no way I'm crossing that without a 4x4, or a Hummer. It's a brown river about 7 feet wide, maybe a little wider, and about two or so feet deep, rushing."

["Akili"] rumbles lightly, "So I turn around *again*, backtrack to the first intersection before the straightaway, and take the long way around. Through more heavy traffic, but whatever. So I go up the residential road, which is three or four steps of uphill areas, with flat spots at the intersections. I cross through several more wide streams, although they're not so deep... and I see *huge* swaths of gravel and sand. Lots of rocks are dinging off of my wheelwells. And I see that one of the empty washes near the school has a waterfall in it."

["Shelly"] says, "Holy hell."

["Akili"] rumbles lightly, "I make it up to the light, which is still working, make my left, then a right onto the road that leads by my house. It's also uphill in a few spots. I creep through the large brown stream that's right after the light, at the base of that first hill. It's not rushing, so I'm not too worried, but it's not exactly shallow. At this point I'm seriously wondering if I can even get home. I go through, cross over a couple other smaller streams, see what looks to be an entire riverbed across another section of the road, and finally make it into my community. Safe."

["Akili"] rumbles lightly, "I know that if I had left 30 minutes earlier, or maybe even 15 minutes, I couldn't have gotten home. And my story doesn't end there."

["Calin"] says, "wow."

["Akili"] rumbles lightly, "While making dinner and scoping out the weather channel - after confirming that the wash in the backyard is flowing pretty good - I get a call from Dave, wondering if I made it home. Sara, who works at a Chevron maybe two miles away, is stuck. The shopping center that the Chevron is on is the highest point around; all three roads leading out are impassable, unless you have that aforementioned Hummer. Or perhaps a helicopter."

["Akili"] rumbles lightly, "I drove a little over 25 miles, total, and made it home. She has a lousy two-mile-max distance from home to work, and she can't go home."

says ["Cal"], "in that weather, forget the helicoptor."

["Akili"] rumbles lightly, "In fact, there are emergency services turning people away from crossing the flooded washes. But that's not all, folks."

says ["Cal"], "wherever that storm came from, it didn't pass anywhere near here."

["Akili"] rumbles lightly, "The rain has mostly stopped when Dave calls me, and about an hour or an hour and a half later, he calls me again. Sara is stuck. Seems that whatever was blocking the path to the washes was finally removed, and some people were making it through. Her little Honda Accord doesn't qualify as a determined vehicle, though - her and a few others get stuck. Some other people are towing them out with a tow-truck, and not for very much, but not for free either. And of course, she doesn't have any cash. Dave wants to know if my AAA Roadside covers such a scenario. I tell him that even if, by some miracle, *I* could get to the other side of the river... Arizona's Stupid_Motorist_Law comes into effect, since the wash *was* blocked off, and she drove through it anyway. So while she's there, a police officer comes by, and starts liberating stuck people of their driver's licenses. Including hers."

["Akili"] rumbles lightly, "Reportedly it's an $800 fine. And that's the last I've heard."

["Shelly"] says, "Oh geez."

says ["Cal"], "Youch"

["Akili"] rumbles lightly, "He said he'd call me back if he still needed me to try to do anything - what that could possibly be, I can't imagine - and it's been quiet since."

["Shelly"] nods.

["Akili"] rumbles lightly, "I figured that the only places I'd have to watch out for were the ones that were marked 'don't cross when flooded'. Out of all the washes I managed to cross, the remainders of the ones I didn't see, and the one I couldn't - none of them were marked. All of these wash ducts and creeks and gullys and everything for directing water... and this place still gets a sinus infection when it rains hard. In fact, the way I got home was, at the time, the *only* way in."

["Akili"] rumbles lightly, "You couldn't even get onto the road from the freeway."

["Calin"] finally finishes and heads for home.

["Calin"] says, "Talk to you guys later."

["Akili"] waves.

says ["Cal"], "place doesn't sound well equiped for hard rains, not that some places here didn't flood severely a few years back."

says ["Cal"], "laters"

["Calin"] has disconnected.

["Akili"] rumbles lightly, "Well, we get rains so infrequently that the ground hard-packs. A little rain is okay, but when it rains hard, the water just flows off of every surface, rather than being absorbed."

["Akili"] rumbles lightly, "In fact, I dug a ditch out beyond the wall into the wash in my backyard... and the sandstone-colored ground was so strong that I was getting sparks when I tried to scrape it down with a shovel. I resorted to letting water soak into it for over 12 hours... which resulted in me being easily able to scrape off not quite a quarter of an inch. And under that softened quarter-inch was more of the stuff, bone-dry."

["Akili"] rumbles lightly, "Took me about a week to dig down roughly half a foot."

["Akili"] rumbles lightly, "No wonder people build houses out of this stuff."

["Shelly"] snickers.

says ["Cal"], "cheap material, LOTS of WORK to turn it into a decent house."

["Cal"] doesn't suppose blasting was an option to break up the hard packed earth.

["Akili"] rumbles lightly, "You know what? I like not being under arrest."

["Shelly"] laughs.

says ["Cal"], "a foot or 2 down the ground gets pretty hard around here. more than once blasting would have been usefull, neglecting certain considerations."

["Akili"] asks, "Like the goodwill of your neighbors, perhaps?"

["Cal"] chuckles.

says ["Cal"], "I was thinking more who an irate neighbor might call, but yes."

["Akili"] grins. "Close enough."