Fourteen Inches

Rain rain go away...
It's normal for this part of the country to get it's April Showers or more like April Downpours but the past few days I don't think I've ever seen so much rain. We even had hail last night. This morning it continued with no signs of slowing down. My speedometer remained under 30 MPH all the way in to work this morning. Most of the roads were flooded by 10:00 a.m. and all of the gates to the base were closed at one point. Traffic had to be rerouted through the flightline to avoid the foot of water that gathered on the main road to the back gate. By 3:00 p.m. all non-essential personnel were ordered to go home. I am considered essential, being the primary point of contact for the unit control center and I have to stay late tonight to ensure all of our personnel are accounted for and do not have any damage to their homes (yeah me-blah). The Weather Channel reported 14 inches of rainfall over the past two days.
This has brought back memories of Ivan the Terrible...
The entire state of Florida was hammered last hurricane season with Charley, Francis, and saving the best for last…Mr. Ivan. When Francis was out in the Gulf, activated the unit control center and the 8-8 shifts started. This was the first day of the 4-day Labor Day weekend and between 4 of us we pulled 12 hour shifts until Monday then Tuesday was back to normal duty hours. Ivan became our next threat and back to work we went. After a few days, we knew this was definitely coming our way and it was going to hurt. I worked an 8:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m. shift, came home, packed, and evacuated. Luckily I had my roommate to drive me, since I had been awake for more than 24 hours. We went to my Grandmothers house in Mississippi until we received the “all clear” to come home. Since we knew the I-10 bridge was out, we ended up driving though back roads of Alabama. We noticed that every town we went through had no power…which meant the possibility of No Gas. Luck was on our side and we found a small country gas station that had set up generators. We got back in town to find a disaster. Trees were down everywhere, fences were gone, power was out, and boats were on the north side of the highway. I fought back tears when I thought about the people that hadn’t come home yet to see their destroyed homes. We both held our breaths as we weaved down our street (around downed trees and power lines). We had lost most of the fence but there was no other damage. Because the windows were boarded up prior to our departure and we had no electricity, we had no air flow in the house. I set up a tent in the back yard and spent a very, almost creepy, quiet night. You don’t realize how much constant noise is out there until the entire city is shut down. Most of the damage has since been repaired but there are still quite a few blue roofs all over the western panhandle.