My home and neighborhood has had rain more or less continuously since late Tuesday afternoon - Sept 10. On Tuesday evening, I was coming home from a meeting and the rain was so heavy I had better visibility with my windshield wipers off than on.

I am south and west of the terrible photographs you can see all over the place on the web. The advantage to the area where I am is that while the rain never really stopped for long, we enjoyed periodic respites from the heavy rain, while the areas to the north were drenched in rain that truly never stopped. Some areas, with an average 20 inches of moisture annually, received over fifty percent of that amount in a little over a day. Once the ground was saturated, there was nowhere for the water to go except to flow in floods.

Here in my area, we had some sunshine for about five hours yesterday, although we could see clouds forming up on the horizon to the north and east. It began to rain again last evening, and today it's cloudy again. We've had light rain off and on. The weather forecasters say that the system should move off within the next day or two. I hope they're right.

This is life in a semi arid climate. Once in awhile, supposedly every hundred years or so, this kind of moisture gets dumped. What makes things so grim is that in the intervening years, society has expanded 21st century lifestyles into places that Mother Nature will reclaim, sooner if not later.

But I wanted my readers to know that I am soggy, soberly grateful for my personal geography, but basically OK.

The Red Cross could use your help, if you are inclined to that sort of thing.