So, it is currently raining and it rained a lot this morning and last night too. Actually, other than Thursday evening when I managed to take a very pleasant walk, it has either been raining or looking like it is about to rain for quite a long while now. I am so sick of all this rain! I will stop complaining now.
Yes, I’m writing any post about the weather. Clearly, nothing is really happening in my life.
Anyway, I was just looking on The Weather Network’s website and noticed that the temperature had risen to -23 which is sadly a considerable improvement over the -30 I saw this morning. I also noticed the following message beside the current temperature: “It is sunny now but rain could be on it’s way, track the precipitation with your Satellite and Radar map.” Of course, there is a zero percent chance of this at these temperatures! You’d think The Weather Network would realize this.
So it is now mid-May and it rained today, not a lot but it definitely rained. There isn’t supposed to happen here from what I’ve heard. For living in the desert we seem to get a lot of rain! At home rains cleans a car but here it makes a car very dirty. My car was just cleaned in the morning but after a little rain and some sand, this is what it looked like when I was finished work for the day:
Everyone keeps talking about how nice it is that the weather is still cool. It has been around 40 degrees in the afternoon lately but as it isn’t too humid it is bearable although not completely pleasant if it is very sunny. Everyone keeps saying that when summer really comes, which is often by now, I’ll not be able to tolerate walking anywhere. I am a bit skeptical that I won’t be able to walk; sure, I figure it won’t be pleasant but I have trouble seeing how it will actually be impossible. I guess we’ll see.
So why I am even writing about the weather (again!)? Well, because it is really the only thing worth noting right now. Things outside of work have been very boring and work has continued to be stressful.
I woke up around 2 this morning to thunder, lightening and rain. My apartment faired a lot better than on Saturday and water only came through one window this time. Still, there was enough water to drench several towels and it was annoying that the problem hadn’t been fixed even though I was told it would be fixed on Sunday.
When I got up in the morning and looked out my window, it didn’t look too bad: the parking lot was less flooded than on Sunday and the road behind my building appeared free of water. However, a few minutes later I received a call from one of my co-workers saying that the roads out here were terrible. So, I decided to take a longer way to work that would hopefully be less flooded. The one road I went on was totally free of water but I still wasn’t able to avoid two roundabouts with water all the wall to the top of the curb (and the curbs here are really high!). Roundabouts tend to be scary here under good conditions so they were terrifying this morning! But the thing that was really scary was when I was driving in the lane of a road that didn’t have much water on it and a big truck came speeding seemingly out of nowhere beside in the lane the was completely flooded. I literally couldn’t see anything but water for about thirty seconds! When I arrived at work surviving the drive definitely seemed like a major accomplishment. I think I’ve only had two driving experiences that were scarier than this (both in major snowstorms) in my life!
The library escaped the rain this time pretty much unscathed. The same cannot be said for some other areas of the college! The students were sent home fairly early in the morning but we had to stay all day and it sure felt like a long day.
The hallway outside the library.
Our new pond!
The boardroom.
A future collapsed ceiling?
Since I was walking around the building taking pictures anyway, I decided to take a picture of the lockers. They are one thing I really like about this place.
The lockers all have student paintings on them.
I took the long way home (though, it really isn’t long) as the street I usually take didn’t seem to look too great. When I returned to be apartment I changed into clothes that I wouldn’t mind getting muddy and went for a little walk around outside and found a flooded street. I’m sure I could have found better examples but I think this gives a bit of an idea of what it is like around here.
A example of a flooded road.
There was thunder and lightening and lots of rain this evening. We had a lot of rain a while back but I don’t remember the thunder and lightening.
This time the rain came down very quickly. I found that a fair amount of water had come through both my bedroom windows and the floor was a bit flooded. This isn’t what you’d expect in an upper floor apartment. I don’t keep anything near those windows so nothing was damaged. Apparently, a lot of other apartments here are flooded and one across the hall is really badly flooded. When I first discovered the flooding my phone couldn’t find a network connection. This hasn’t happened to me before; there is a cell phone tower practically behind my building. The part of the parking lot that is prone to flooded flooded very quickly (luckily, I’m parked where it doesn’t really flood). This all happened in well under an hour! Nothing in this country seems built to handle any rain at all and yet rain doesn’t seem all that rare!
I’m really hoping that the roads aren’t too bad tomorrow and that there isn’t any more rain!
Amanda NOT in Abu Dhabi 