Hermine

As I said a few hours ago on FB, that's the closest I ever want to come to reading meters in a hurricane. I had an unfamiliar route today that I think I may have done once before, but if I have it's been a while. It would have been a ridiculously easy route if it hadn't been for the weather. I was in the Knoll Creek/O'Connor area inside 1604.

The first thing I did was go to the Wal-Mart at 281 & 1604 and buy a poncho, which worked well as long as it was only raining. For the first couple of hours, all it did was rain and it wasn't too bad. Then my handheld started getting too wet because--I suddenly noticed--something had fallen off and exposed the innards and they were getting wet. I called in and told my supervisor, "Uh...you know that little infrared window on the top of the Roadrunner?" And he said, "Oh yeah, yours was missing this morning, wasn't it?" Sheesh. They knowingly sent me out into a freakin' tropical storm with a Roadrunner with a hole in it. So anyway, the display had gone blank so they started loading up a new one to bring out to me. I sat in my truck with the heater running so I could try to blow hot air into the thing to dry it out, and eventually I sort of got the display back okay enough that I could work with it.

About that time the wind really started, and even though the poncho couldn't keep me dry anymore, it did cut the wind, which helped. I lost about 30 minutes trying to get the handheld working again, but I guess it could have been worse. Eventually they got the new one to me and by that time the wind was really howling--the raindrops were slamming sideways so hard they stung even through the poncho and my thoroughly soaked shirt. By the time I got down to the last 30 meters or so I was able to read only about 1 out of 5 because it was raining so hard, everything was flooded and I couldn't dry off my glasses.

The poncho wasn't quite long enough--it should have been about a foot longer--and my knees were exposed. So my pants got so soaked at the knees that the water started running inside my rubber boots and I tried reducing the runoff by pulling the pants out of the boots. Later when I finished I was actually pouring water out of the boots.

It had been trash day in that area, and I got to see those big garbage containers, still upright, shooting down the street to the bottom of the hill. Between a steep hill, the wind and about three inches of water coursing down the street, those garbage cans were really picking up some speed.

I had taken a complete change of clothes with me--plus a towel--because I knew I was going to get soaked. When I finished I headed back up to the Valero at 1604 & Bulverde Road, dried off and changed clothes and bought a coffee. By the way, it takes a long time to drive from up there back to Mission Road when you can only do 40 mph.

Sabra has a radar picture. I was somewhere under the first "n" in "Antonio."

Oh yeah, I almost forgot to add this. On the way home, there were power lines down in China Grove. One was snapped right off about 12 feet off the ground, about a half dozen more were toppled over and/or broken. Apparently all of China Grove was without power. No working traffic lights from Rigsby/410 out to the Adkins Post Office.