On Friday evening Stillwater was hit hard by a major storm and flash flood. In the space of 90 minutes, 6 inches of rain were dumped on our city. I seriously considered making my way to Lowe's for some sandbags to guard our front door.
I'd made plans to go to Ville's at 7:00 and kept checking our local network telly channels to find out the status. As usual, Oklahoma City's channels were covering only the areas that might affect them, despite the fact that it wasn't even sprinkling there. They didn't even have the little Dopler map of the state in the upper right corner. I've gotten used to their, "If it ain't happening here, it ain't happening!" attitude (Tulsa's no better, they only cover the weather once it has passed over us and is on its way to their city), but this time they really dropped the ball. And I'm not even going to talk about the funnel cloud we saw less than a mile from our house. I then went to the weather channel and the current report said, "Light rain".
As it happened, we had major flash flooding and two people were washed into Boomer Creek that runs through the center of the city and had suddenly turned into a river. The rain stopped and, not knowing there was a flood, I decided it was okay to drive across town to Ville's.
Of course, I got detoured onto one of the most flooded streets in the city and I eased out of the tire-high water only very carefully. There were no road blocks on the streets that needed them and I got turned around at every street that would take me across the creek. Boomer lake too had flooded its banks and the road and peninsulas were under water. When I finally got to my destination (an hour later than I'd planned) there were helicopters and fire trucks everywhere.
And what were the OKC and Tulsa channels broadcasting? The usual sitcoms and the weather in Connecticut.
Thanks for nothing.
