Jul 5, 2002 | Q
I’ve gotta tell you, it’s freaky seeing the place you grew up, the highways you drove daily being totally overwhelmed with floodwater. I remember driving along 281 on the section that crosses the Olmos flood control basin, always wondering how water could possibly get high enough to cause trouble; the pictures on the news today made it a little clearer to me. As you’d expect, the local coverage has the best pictures.
Those are amazing pictures; it’s hard to believe that I-10, 410, and 281 were all at various points submerged/wiped out. As always, there’s the errant pickup truck driver (no doubt wearing a Skoal cap) who thinks he can ford the washed out road in his Dodge/Chevy/Ford XLT 750 King Cab double-rear jacked-up pickup who gets washed down the river like so much kindling. Yeehah!
• Posted by: steveriden on Jul 8, 2002, 1:19 PMHey, I didn’t know you were from Texas! (ex-Texan here, of course — Decatur, up near Dallas/Fort Worth). I was just getting nostalgic online with some other ex-Texans about how great thunderstorms are… the smell, the violence of the rain, the way the air goes still and the sky turns green and black just before it happens… we don’t get that here in sunny mild San Francisco. I miss it — though I can certainly do without the flash floods. Hope your fam & friends are all OK.
• Posted by: Lydia Markoff on Jul 8, 2002, 5:19 PM