Levee breaks

"If it keeps on raining, levee is going break"...

As Led Zepplin said. And I am here to tell you the last twenty-four hours have shown that this may be true as I sit perched on the porch watching the torrential downpour that has overwhelmed us.

Until about a week ago I wasn't sure what people meant about "amazing light shows" or "thunder so loud is makes me cry". And then I got to experience my first "amazing, crying in your boots type of thunderstorm". Unfortunately I had to drive home in it as I was about a half an hour away from home, and with fingers crossed and lights on I crawled home. The crack of thunder so loud you would have thought that the storm was happening inside the car. And the bolts of lightening seemingly 100's of feet from you. Not to mention the rains that came down, the windshield wipers not even clearing your windshield as it was solid sheets of water. At twenty mph, it took me forever to get home, and with car in 4-wheel drive I slowly climbed up the steep slope to the house. Since then we have had our fair share of storns. Sometimes with lightening only, sometimes with thunder and lightening and sometimes with rain mixed in. Planning anything during a storm is somewhat pointless as you never know when you are going to lose power. The loudest storm I've "yet" - famous last words I know - heard was the other night when we had our weekly dinner and a movie night and during the 34 minutes of the movie that we saw, we lost power 5 different times. Finally the girls said, "take us home" as the storm was brewing for something spectactular. The poor dog was beside herself with the crackling of thunder, and as we sat outside on the porch with no lights other than the lightening lighting up the world I realized that this is amazing. And a little scary. An Alfred Hitchcock movie came to mind as it is pretty dark in this world with no lights. And could the world possibly be coming to an end?

But cool, amazing things also happen when the rains come. All of the frogs come out, arroyo's and roads suddenly become riverbeds with at least a foot of water in them running as fast as class II rapid. The crab's come out which amazes me in itself. Suddenly hundreds of crabs show up on the streets but where did they come from? I even had one outside of my casita the other day and I'm about 8 blocks from the beach! Where do these crabs live when the rains are done? No-one can seem to answer that question. They don't come from the beach, but where? The crocodile's have also come out, or so I've heard. They have crossed the barrier and drug themselves down the beach to the water. So now the dog will not be able to have quite as much freedom when walking the beach. Dogs seem to be a favorite treat of the crocs. And I too will be staying out of the water for a bit, or at least staying way downstream of the mangroves where the crocodiles live.

And then there is my favorite; over night things green up. The hillsides that were so brown with what looked like dead trees and shrubs magically turn green. Vegetation is refreshed and growing again.

So as I patiently wait for the rains to subside just a bit so I can drive into town, and I watch as the rivers that have formed travel both down our road and the water run-off troughs, I think to myself, this is pretty cool.

Staying somewhat dry in Mexico (sounds a bit like Seattle, no?)
Heidi and the dog who barks at thunder.

PS-I heard the rainfall here was at least 6 inches in the last 24 hours. Holy rain a lot. Our beach has flooded out and now the kids are tubing down the once (yesterday) dry riverbeds. Hows that for rainfall?