| Noah the Prophet |
[13 Jun 2008|11:58pm] |
[OOC]
This post is for BLITEOTW day. I'm sorry to everyone who got worried. I really should have made it less realistic and more silly. I never really read it through until after I posted it because I was trying to get it in before midnight.
If this is your first time reading this, BLITEOTW stands for Blot Like It's The End Of The World, and it happens every year. Mostly people blog about zombies, but I wanted to break the mold. So here it is. All fake, though it pulls from some depressingly real current events.
[/OOC]
2 minutes to midnight. The tornado siren wound down suddenly around 22:30, which means the capital is probably gone. It won't be long now.
I was reading the news a couple days ago and there were all of these stories about how parts of Iowa were flooding, 12-15 feet above record flood stage, whole cities under water. I'm usually a big fan of storms, because they're cool and full of uncontrollable power that has never directly affected me. I've sat through as tornadoes whirled by bare miles on either side, and I've slept through 3 hurricanes. And those are the big sudden ones that are scary and people make movies out of. Flooding always seemed a whole lot more tame to me. I mean, can't you just see the water rising and pack up your stuff and go to higher ground? I scoffed at all those people in Iowa who lost their homes, livelihood, and belongings to the rising waters. They obviously didn't plan ahead for this sort of thing. I mean, if you live near a river, and your town is has the word "Rapids" in it, you at least get flood insurance, right?
This morning, two of the major highways into and out of the city were closed off due to flood waters and washout. By this afternoon, the other two were gone, major bridges swept away in the rushing torrents of upstream runoff. It had been raining all week, after all, though the weather had cleared up for today. The sun even came out around 4, when everyone started getting off work and realizing what was going on. The lucky ones found a way home eventually, though the traffic was horrendous. Ironic, that it was the roads going towards the water that were most packed. No one got it yet.
Then the rains started again, around 6. Rush hour was still in full swing (or full stop, as it were), and the rain only slowed things down. At first it was just a downpour, like it had been doing all week. Some thunder and lightening, reduced visibility, nothing particularly new or exciting. But it just kept getting worse. The wind picked up, rain was augmented by hail, and lightening was flashing everywhere. In under 20 minutes the entire region was blanketed in severe weather alerts and tornado warnings. And the water was rising again, more quickly than before.
I got home early, because my job doesn't allow me to take overtime and I worked late a couple days this week to avoid riding through the inclement weather on Monday and Wednesday. A bit ironic, really. Still, after stopping to pick up tape, fuses, and bagels, I barely beat the rush. I turned on the computers and checked the internet, as par usual. The weather is just one of the tabs that I open up automatically, I don't usually even look at it unless I have frisbee. I almost missed it.
The National Weather Service uses white for displaying 75DBZ and above on radar outputs, so at first it didn't look too bad. Then I saw the edges of pink and purple, and realized that the blob was not interference, just more powerful than the radar could accurately measure. (For reference, 60DBZ is about 6 inches of rain an hour.) And it was heading straight for us, right along the course of the several rivers that feed our lakes. Already there were reports of unprecedented water levels and low level flooding, and the rain hadn't even started yet. Conventional news hadn't had a chance to catch up yet, so few people even knew what was happening.
I stayed here; what else was I supposed to do? Most of the roads are covered with water now, I certainly can't bike anywhere, and even if I had a boat there would be nowhere to go; the rain is still falling, and higher ground is scarce. The basement is completely flooded, and there's only a couple inches of water on the floor, but it's been creeping ever upward. My computers are all in plastic bags except this one, though I doubt it'll do much good. I've got another 2 hours, max, until the Lair is under water, and I don't know what I'll do after that. Probably swim.
And I'm one of the lucky ones. We're about 50 feet higher than downtown is. And there's nowhere to go there either; lake on either side, and the entire isthmus flooded. I haven't heard from anyone since this afternoon, I hope they got out all right. All of Madison is underwater, and the flood waters should have hit Beloit about an hour ago. I was thinking yesterday of going to help fill sandbags as a volunteer project. Seems so small-minded now.
And the rain is still falling.
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