Rain, rain, come again...

Water fell too heavily on the wrong parts of the country in this past few weeks. The Columbia river basin, in the eastern shadow of the Cascade mountains, lost out in the water department. With an ineffective sprinkle that seemed to evaporate before it hit the parched desert the soil kept getting drier and drier. Faithful irrigation only penetrated an inch or two.
After the fall equinox nighttime temperatures dropped, a harbinger of autumn for sure, but the daily sun beat temperatures into the upper 80 degrees and the soil had no relief. One night the temperature fell below 40 degrees and the next afternoon an unusual chinook breezed through, blowing incessantly for over 24 hours. Clouds blew in and, what do you know, rain began! Rain actually fell on the Tri-cities area for more than nine hours - a gentle constant rain - in a weather front that somewhere caused the electricity to blink. For three minutes I wondered if the night would be really dark for a change. No such luck although I couldn't have spied the stars through the thick gray clouds anyway. I turned off the electricity to my computer and before I could crawl into bed, the electricity came again.
I would have chosen to have several inches of the rains that fell on Louisiana and Mississippi during the hurricanes, like I would have a choice? Frankly, just what disaster would occur if twenty inches, or even 10, would fall on the Columbia basin within four hours I cannot imagine.
Nature disregards human wants. Nature is benign, working with the natural laws of physics. I do not always like it but I can live with it.

Naomi Sherer