Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head

This weekend, Hurricane Ike got the glory. It's an impressively big storm if commentators keep comparing it to the size of Texas, which it was pummeling at the time.

For some reason, I don't remember Camille (1969), maybe because it didn't hit Texas directly. But I clearly remember Celia, a storm that struck the Texas coast during the hurricane season of 1970. Celia wasn't one for the record lists, but it was powerful enough. Living in San Antonio at the time was like having a box-seat view, but without the danger of much more than strong rain. I remember listening to the coverage of the storm on our little black radio, rather than anything I saw about it on TV. Maybe the announcer had some special urgency in his voice as he told us that Celia was expected to make landfall at such-and-such time, which was soon, as it bore down on Corpus Christi.

On Friday afternoon here in metro Chicago, it started to rain. This had nothing to do with Ike, which was still thumping its chest as it approached the Gulf coast. As much as I understand these things, our rain was the result of cool air from the north meshing with warm air from the south like two cogwheels. The wheels got stuck in place for a while, because after a slack period Friday night, the rain picked up again (perhaps in the wee Saturday morning hours) and it rained until Saturday afternoon. Not drizzle, either, but a turd-floating downpour that went on and on.

Some 6.63 inches fell here on September 13, which seems to be a record for the rain-measurement station at O'Hare during a single calendar day, besting a total recorded one day in 1987 (I was in Chicago then, but don't remember it). Other spots probably got more. Then the residuum of Ike came our way today, dropping a few more inches. It's been a wet few days.

Weatherman Tom Skilling posted some pictures of the waters here, on his September 13 posting. We were fortunate on our block not to see any street flooding along these lines. Scary water accumulation wasn't far away, however: more on that tomorrow, maybe with my own pictures.