And Then The Rains Came

There’s a town in Southern Utah called Hurricane. You said it wrong. It’s pronounced “her-a-kin.” Well, a her-a-kin came to Utah today. I guess technically it’s a tropical storm at this point. It quit being a her-a-kin before it hit California.

Tropical Storm Rosa was expected around noon today. She held off until about 9:00 PM. It strange because our state was on fire just two weeks ago. In fact, the serious fires are not completely contained. I’m guessing that’s not going to be a relevant metric tomorrow.

In fact, we’ve had an especially dry and hot summer. In Utah, moisture is measured three ways, the height of the water in our resevoirs, the depth of our snow in the winter and the ground water level. Last year was a really wet year. Our resevoirs filled last summer. This was a bad winter. The snow levels were not good. And that led to the ground water levels being the lowest they’ve been in 40 years.

And we didn’t get a lot of rain this summer. In fact, I don’t think it rained at all during the month of July or August.

Because Rosa was delayed, I spent the evening working on my son’s car. I’m trying to replace his fuel pump. That means I have to drop the gas tank. I’ve never done that before and it’s taking me longer than expected. I just about had it down when Rosa showed up. Wind and rain and a lot of lightening. When you are disconnecting a large metal sack full of gas fumes, you pay an extra level of attention to the crackle of thunder and flash of fire through the sky.

When the storm front arrived, I had to physically hold down the pavilion I put up to shield me from sun and rain. It didn’t matter. The rain was blowing sideways and the pavilion was doing it’s best kite imitation.

And then the power went out. Yep. I’m done. I threw some jack stands under the pecariously balanced fuel tank and by the light of a flashlight packed it up.

And the rain is drenching the state as I type this on my phone by flashlight.

Welcome to fall and bring on the rain.

Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.

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