Who ever designed the city of West Monroe must have wanted to remind the residents of The Great Flood every time it rains. You would think the city planners would be aware of the flash floods we frequently have around here and made the appropriate drainage system. But no. In less than an hour of raining, Cypress St, N. 7th St, and Arkansas Rd (three of the city's major roads) were all under water.
It started raining as soon as I got off work yesterday and an hour later, when I had to go to class, the standing water in my parking lot was almost to the bottom of my car doors. My poor car: driving through all that water was not good for it. The flooding of the car made my air conditioner stop working so my windows were fogging up because of all the moisture in the air. So there I was, driving out to ULM in the torrential rains on the flooded streets with my windows down and my windshield fogged up. I'm not sure it was worth risking my life to make it to class, but I made it there alive.
Most of the floods had subsided by the time I was out of class, but as I was driving to the store last night, I had to re-route to avoid a lake in the middle of Parkwood Drive. People with large trucks were stuck in it, so I didn't think my car could handle it. The old Sentra Aaron and I used to share could have handled it: it was an all-terrain vehicle. My current car is more like a some-terrain vehicle.
It's supposed to rain more this week. Hopefully, I'll be able to stay home and enjoy the rain in the comfort of the house rather than braving the downpour in the less-adequate shelter of my car.
When we turned off I-20 onto Stella-Mill last night about 5:00, the water was up to the doors of pick-ups. We were in our Taurus. We considered a detour, but there was simply nowhere for us to go but straight ahead... so I was following in the wake of an SUV when a jacked-up monster truck passed us on the left going a lot faster. The wave of water from that truck lifted our car off the pavement. We felt ourselves floating for just a second through the intersection.
Thankfully, we kept moving forward and quickly rejoined the pavement... but I never ever ever want to experience that sensation again.
did you see the back end of our parking lot and the two cars buried to their door handles? matt wading out there is one of the funniest things i have ever seen...
Posted by: Uncle Josh at June 18, 2003 12:02 PMI think your arch-enemy landlady was one of the flood victims. For being such a parking-lot Nazi, I can't believe she was parked down there. I also noticed all the cars that are usually parked down there were parked on higher ground this morning.
Posted by: Christin at June 18, 2003 12:19 PMyeah, i think that the fascist's taurus got pretty messed up. and EVERYone is on higher ground today, but hindsight it 20/20...hehe. oh, and mrs. rockett said that she heard some places got 4.73 inches of rain...IN ONE HOUR!
Posted by: Uncle Josh at June 18, 2003 12:28 PMIf only the real Nazis were so concerned with parking-lots, the world might be a very different place.
Posted by: Patrick at June 18, 2003 01:00 PMIt's just Louisiana that is like that. For instance, I've heard of towns where the pumping station is actually in the lowest part of the town, so when it rains, the station floods, and thus is unable to function.
I'm not sure who got the better end of the deal...Jefferson or Napolean.
Posted by: Jeannette at June 18, 2003 02:20 PMI think you're right about the Louisiana thing.
You know how Louisiana has a different law system than the rest of the country? They call it the "Napoleanic Code", but I like to call it "Murphy's Law."
Posted by: Christin at June 18, 2003 02:31 PMWhen we lived in Savannah, we had a major flood... the whole town was under about 4-5 feet of water and people were all swimming and frolicking in the parks...too bad it was straight from the city sewer system. --shudder--
For all the rain Monroe and West Monroe got, would you believe that the airport got less than half an inch?
Posted by: SonofThunder at June 19, 2003 01:51 PM