Flash flood

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People from the midwest like to talk about weather, but that's mostly because we actually get weather worth talking about aside from it being an important concern for farmers in the flat, fertile expanse that is flyover country. You grow up with severe thunderstorms, green skies, baseball-sized hail, twisters, flash flooding and a distrust of the TV weathermen who try in vain to make computers predict weather that changes every 5 minutes. Finns don't do much small talk and don't, in general, chit chat about the weather since you can't really do much about it. I mean, it's raining, so what? Weather is something anyone can talk about. In fact, it may be the only topic of conversation in the US these days that won't get you sent to Gitmo or berated by fundy freaks.

The weather lately has been odd as it hasn't been very warm but the humidity has been so high that it has taken clothes at least a week to dry when they would normally dry in less than 24 hours. Today the wind was blowing in strong, sustained gusts all day long and it made me uneasy since strong winds always mean trouble, especially storms. The clouds started coming in on my way home and I had just made it in the door when it started raining fairly hard, so I fed Otava and decided to wait until the rain subsided. The sky was dark enough to fool the sensors on most of the street lights and, after about 15 minutes, the rain let up and we ventured out the door to do what dogs do outdoors. The wind was still blowing which should have told me to stay inside as we didn't make it more than 100 meters down the street before the sky opened and began pouring buckets of water. We ducked into a driveway which, unfortunately had a yard higher than the street so that we had about 3 inches of water rushing past our feet while we watched downspouts become geysers, the street transform into a river and a few soaked kids resignedly pedalling home on their bicycles. Gale force winds blew sheets of water in every direction while idiot drivers hydroplaning down the street chucked curtains of water onto the sidewalk. It was an electrical storm as well, the likes of which I've not seen outside of the midwest and certainly not here before. Otava kept trying to bury his head between my legs with every flash and boom. The lightning took out a few trees and a flagpole in front of the Hotel Marski, too. It was an impressive storm, even by midwestern standards. Who says that radical global climate change isn't good for anything?

It's still warm, humid and the winds remain strong so I'd bet this storm isn't done yet.

And the blue moomin princess cake is coming soon since a colleague of mine brought me a bowl of freshly picked blueberries from home. It's blue food season. :)