Flooding

Sunday I drove down to Waltham for a week of meetings at work. It was raining heavily during the drive, but that's not unusual, so I didn't really think much of it, other than wishing my cute little rental car didn't have such a tendency to hydroplane.

And then I got onto the side streets. I've never seen water gushing up out of the storm drains before. The size of the puddles reminded me of the Cost Rica guidebook's tips on crossing rivers. I wished I'd left the rental car with Michael and brought the SUV with its high clearance.

Turned on the news Monday morning to watch people being evacuated from their homes in Waltham in the middle of the night. Luckily, the hotel sits on a hill, and the streets between here and work are relatively dry.

The rain stopped sometime Monday night, but the Charles River is still very high here in Waltham, in part because they've had trouble opening the floodgates on the dam. As of this morning, they had only succeeded in opening 5 of the 12.

I'm hoping the flooding concerns ease up by tomorrow night, because I want to go to the Irish pub for dinner so I can listen to the live Irish music on St. Patrick's Day. But the pub (and most of the good restaurants in Waltham) are on the other side of the river. In fact, I'm pretty sure that the news coverage about the dam that I saw this morning was shot from the patio of the Mexican restaurant I'm eating at later this week.