Where'd I Put That Ark?

I am not a big fan of our local newspapers. In fact, I am not a big fan of local newspapers anywhere. I am not sure just why. Perhaps it's because they so often get the story wrong and it takes several follow-up stories to correct the errors, if they are ever actually corrected. It's not just the newspapers either, it's the local TV news... though they usually are not quite as bad.

But this morning I came across a story that was quite informative and useful, though the "teaser" was confusing... Let me illustrate. The headline was:

Red Cross helps two more families

And the "teaser" read "There were a dozen gopher tortoise mounds behind where Nikki St. Pierre lives, near U.S. 27 and S.R 70."

This is the first line in the story. Which is rather confusing when you try to correlate it with the headline. Was Nikki and her family (and perhaps her neighbors) attacked by gopher tortoises???

It turns out that, no, it wasn't rampaging tortoises brandishing pitchforks and torches storming the homes of unsuspecting residents, it was water that was the threat.

It seems we have been been the victims of a deluge... 40" of rain since the first of June (our average annual rainfall is just over 50"). That's a lot of rain and it has to go somewhere. Therefore, it has been filling up low spots all over the county.  In a way, it is a good thing. After all, we've been in a drought for several years and we need the water to replenish our lakes and the aquifer. But, instead of it being spread out over 6 months or more, it has been a daily event; late afternoon thunderstorms with copious amounts of rain.

It's affected the golf around here; golf courses are typically built in low lying areas. We've had courses close off  a number of holes. Just yesterday, the one I play most often closed off the front nine ("until further notice"). It's understandable, that nine hole section has a lot of drainage problems.

We humans are never happy. We gripe about drought and we gripe about rain. Wouldn't it be nice if it only rained from 3 to 4 in the morning, gently, and just enough to replenish the evaporation and usage rates of water?