Today is my Dad’s 82nd birthday. Happy birthday, Dad!
I called him up, wished him a happy birthday and we spent 16 minutes and 49 seconds talking about the rainstorm we had in Spokane yesterday. 1 inch of rain in less than 20 minutes.
We talked about how it reminded me of being in an earthquake in Seattle in 2001. 15 seconds of excitement and wonder, followed by 15 seconds of awe, followed by 15 seconds of wishing for nothing other than to have the shaking stop. The timeline yesterday was a little more drawn out but it followed the same pattern: childish glee at the amount of water falling from the sky, followed by amazement at how quickly the street in front of my house turned into a sizable creek, followed by the fervent desire for the rain to stop before someone got killed.
We talked about how the rain reminded me of a couple rainstorms I witnessed when I lived in Florida. Not just sheets of rain moving across the lawn, not just blankets, but duvets stuffed with down comforters of rain. Thick. More water in the air than air.
Here’s what we didn’t talk about: how Florida rain is an unusual thing for Spokane. How a warming atmosphere holds more water vapor than a cooler atmosphere. How flooding will be a more common thing going into the future. How we humans need to curb our emissions, drastically so. Now.
My Dad is 82.
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