Nearricane

I missed my chance.  Every time Richmond is hit with the leftovers of a hurricane, the news always shows an update of the hurricane-highlights montage featuring a cars splashing water as they pass, a close-up of running water, and some douchebag with a briefcase fording his way to work.

I was this close to being that douchebag.

And it's not just post-Katrina fever that gets the local news in such a tizzy for heavy weather.  It's also our very own lingering post-Gaston fever. 

If you're not in Richmond, or just don't remember, Gaston came through two years ago and dropped a massive amount of rain in a tiny amount of time, flooding Shockoe Bottom (which is basically at the bottom) because our inferior drainage system couldn't keep up with the flow of water.  But fortunately, we had our flood wall to make sure all that water didn't spread to any of the uphill areas.  Or something.  The resulting flood caused millions of dollars of damage and several deaths.  The city's response to the ongoing drainage issues was "no, no, we really need to focus on where we're putting the new ballpark."

And before that was Isabel, though I can say very little about the amount of water in the Bottom, because I didn't have electricity for a couple of weeks and going out to ask the neighbors involved climbing over fallen trees.

So Richmonders are understandably (maybe not to the extent we take it) wary of incoming weather.  It'd just be nice if our politicians worried more about it before it started raining.