To date, where we live has had three times the normal amount of precipitation for the first two weeks of January. Precipitation is a weather person’s fancy word for rain and snow. That, coupled with unusually high temperatures followed by unusually low ones, made the ground squishy at first, then semi-frozen. It’s made the St. Joe River rise higher than I’ve ever seen it too.
Because our back door is approximately twenty feet from the river, we’ve become obsessed with all things watery. For instance, some of our trees that formerly stood at the edge of the river in the dry season are now surrounded by it. So we study them daily for rings on the outside of their trunks, indicating the water has receded. Believe me, I’m a lot more interested in those rings than I ever was in counting the rings on the inside of a tree to determine its age.
Our two-part dock is swamped. Our sump pump is doing overtime. And, since we are on a septic system, we talk a lot about how often to run the dishwasher or the washing machine. I shudder to think what we’d do if the power went out.
We are also becoming obsessed with weather reports, especially long-range forecasts, as if the forecasters are going to be more accurate than before. Depending on what we learn, we hope they are . . . or are not.
Earl and I gave up a condo on the tenth floor a few years ago to move here, and we’ve never looked back. However, that condo had one obvious advantage over our river house. We didn’t need flood insurance.
Leave a Reply