So, the city of Lubbock shut down on Friday.
Actually, the shutting-down process started on Thursday evening, because by about midnight on Thursday, Lubbock had received 7 inches of rain in a 24-hour period. In its 100-year history, the city has never seen such rainfall.
I would blame the hurricane, and I wouldn't be entirely wrong about that, but it was actually the frontal boundary coming down from the north meeting up with the front that's being chased along by the hurricane. I suppose we should be grateful we got no tornadoes.
Anyway! Schools closed, daycares closed, city and county office closed, activities were cancelled, I had to take a detour to get to work, half of our patients didn't show up... because of rain.
I'm from Indiana. When it rains, we get out the umbrellas and go on with life as normal.
It wasn't really because of the rain, it was because of Lubbock's drainage system. At some point in the past, the city fathers said to one another:
1: Hey, it doesn't rain much here. We don't need to spend money on a storm drainage system.
2: But what will we do, then, when it does rain?
3: Shut down the city!
1: No, let's dig out some playa lakes in all the city parks. Then we'll build the streets to kind of slope toward the parks, so all the water will run there. Eventually.
2: Good plan. Can I help lay the dynamite to blow out the playa lakes?
1: Sure.
4: What happens if it rains a lot, say over 5 inches in less than 24 hours, and the streets are rendered impassable?
1: Don't be silly. Such a thing only happens once in 100 years.
2: Seriously, though, what will we do when it does happen?
3: Shut down the city!
1: Oh, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Or not, since it will probably be washed out.
4: Good plan. Our descendents will praise our foresight.
2: Let's go down to Ye Olde Burrito Place for lunch.
3: After lunch, can we shut down the city for a couple of hours and play golf?
4: Sure.
4 comments:
I laughed out loud when I read this, which probably wasn't good because I am at work ... anyway, your blog is like my sentiments exactly about how completely ridiculous this city is drainage wise and how nutty people get when there is a difference in the weather.
Morgan and I went out and got coffee and were headed to wal mart around 10:30 when his mom called to make sure we weren't our becuase we would surely be stranded. It was pretty funny actually.
Remember last winter when the weather guys were telling people to stock up on non perishables because we were all going to be trapped in our houses for days trying to survive the worst winter storm any of us had every seen ... and then it snowed about one hundreth of an inch.
This town is so amazingly awesome sometimes!
I know... we all had a laugh about that on Friday at work... first we shut down because of a forecast of snow, then because of a few overflowed playa lakes... man, those school buses would never have handled seven inches of rain!
that is precisely how the conversation went. too bad they didn't actually shut down the city and tell people not to leave their houses in their own cars. . . we all know that lubbockians can't drive in rain, even when it's not actually rain and someone's just passing by an aggressive lawn sprinkler, they swerve off the slanted roads and crash into something. thanks for the laugh!!!
No, thank you! I'm going to be laughing about the "aggressive sprinkler" for a while.
You know what I've been wondering? If someone in the parks department thought ahead last week and turned off the sprinklers in the city parks. I've been having visions of the sprinkler heads in Maxey Park coming up under several feet of water and spraying away.
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