Memorial Day Weather

This is downtown Austin, taken from South Congress yesterday. During the rainstorm.

It seems as if I always associate Memorial day with wild weather. Right now, I am hearing thunder in the distance, and it reminds me of two Memorial day weekends that turned out to be very wild.

I remember the Memorial Day Flood of 1981. I remember clutching an infant Vanessa, and wading in my yard with the water up over my ankles. I was watching the older lady in the house behind and downhill from ours, digging a trench around her house to keep the water from coming in her back door. I wished I could help, but my baby and Chandra had to come first. Fortunately, the water didn't come in our house, but I was frightened for a while. SSS was on volunteer fireman duty, as was every fireman in the area.

Then, there was 1990, the year Brendan was born. We were out at the lake with some of Jimmy's relatives, and we saw the storm coming. We literally raced it home, pulling into the driveway as the first huge drops of rain slammed into us. It was Jimmy's skill, driving that old Econoline van in the vicious wind that got us home at all. The next day, every fence in the neighbourhood was down, except for ours. Ours was one of those where the boards are on alternating sides, so there were spaces for the wind to blow through.

Nothing so fierce is predicted for today. So far.