This Wasn't In My Planned Post

but its blog worthy in my opinion.

Last night I woke up in the middle of the night. To thunder. Do you know when the last time I heard thunder was? March. In Oklahoma, the night before we left. Did you know there was a tornado in OKC the night we left? I digress.

The storm dropped more than 12 inches on parts of the island today in a matter of just a few hours. MAJOR highways were closed, there were mud slides, homes flooding, cars flooding (which is a problem in a place where lots of folks live in their cars). The news said it was taking 75-90 minutes to get from Kapolei to Kunia. If you're unfamilar with the area let me break that down for you, that's 75-90 minutes to get from exit 2 to exit 7. That is my route to work and I'm usually annoyed that it takes 20 minutes to get that far in the mornings. Luckily I had to pick up a co-worker and she new a better path that helped us avoid traffic!

You also might not know that people don't take great care of their stuff around here because it's hard to keep things nice when you live by the beach. So there are houses on the North Shore that were built 50 years ago by the owners grandfather and the current owner has done nothing to update the building (things are not made here like they are on the mainland). WELL, that proved a problem today when the rains came and houses literally floated off their foundations... The news said the houses got put right back down, but I'm not sure how that works. And apparently part of the problem was that the city let the dam on the river go in order to relieve some of the pressure put on the dam. I think the jury might still be out on which incident flooded the homes.

And with such a high homeless population this kind of weather sends people into a tail spin (it would me too!). The buses were packed, they had to open Red Cross shelters, it was like a serious natural disaster was occurring. Folks even said it looked like a hurricane outside, which I was VERY uncomfortable hearing.

Things are drying out now, but it's just amazing to me that folks around here had no plans for something like this to happen (and from what I hear, it's not terribly uncommon). People here have retention walls around buildings and homes. And they also have drains that haven't been cleaned out in awhile. Anyone know what that causes? Bueller? That's right, flooding. The city had to come to my office today to clean out the drainage hole because the parking lot was becoming a pond and I guess that was a familiar scene around here today. Why did they not think of this before rainy season? Makes no sense to me.

Oh, and the best part: The standing water is brown. I figured it was just the red dirt (that's right, out of the 3 states I have lived in in my lifetime 2 claim to be the red dirt capitol of the world). Well, the news just said you aren't supposed to go into it or near it if you can avoid it because it is likely over-flow from septic tanks and drainage areas. Delicious. Now my damn grass is just going to grow faster.

Well, I'm going to bed now, grateful to be dry thanks to living up on the hill.

PS - This same storm is bring snow to the top of Mauna Kea (a volcano on the Big Island). Didn't I hear once that an inch of rain = a foot of snow? Geez.