Much Rain.

First off, let's us say this: it's still raining. It's been raining since somewhere in the five o'clock hour, but the rain we are currently enjoying—gentle, lovely, soaking—is not the rain we enjoyed this evening, which was famous even before it ended. It's rained before at ANYLF, notably here and here. And it's hailed before, too. But this rain was bigger. And this hail, while it lasted, was much, much smaller, and so not as fancy (or damaging), but the crackerjack staff here at ANYLF demands the reporting of hail when it hails. So: pea-sized. Some. Two or three separate times somewhere close to seven o'clock. Minor tomato damage. Moderate petunia damage, but those fuckers get damaged if you look at them crossways. What they like is three days of sun. We do not so much have that right this second.

There was wind, too, of the will-La-Vieja-Nueva's-tree-come-tossing-into-our-yard? sort, but other than the tomatoes, we came through that fine, and the tomatoes are now staked to some maple tongue-and-groove flooring I was saving for, it turns out, this storm. But this is not about the wind. It is also not about the hail. This, friends and fans of astonishments meteorological, is about the rain, which, if you're scoring at home, and we were, was 4.4 inches in about two hours: ANYLF world record. What happens when that happens? Water in the outbuilding, for one. For two, water in the basketball court down in the park:


For three, water all everywhere else all over the city. Buffalo Creek: for a while this evening, not so much a creek.

You want your radar progression? Oh, weatherheads, we have the radar progression. Here's six o'clockish:


And then I went out back, to the as-yet-unflooded outbuilding, because I thought that giant comma of doom had moved past us. But it backfilled, or backbuilt, or just plain backed up, and I got stranded out there while all hell broke loose. This, though, is a classic—or familiar, at least—27408/1 pattern: The line that builds and builds along a Greensboro-Winston axis and just keeps on coming, keeps on raining, keeps on sprouting new storms. Does it rain an hour north or south of here? By and large, it does not. I think the fancies like to use the word 'train' when this happens. But I digress. Here's 7:50:


And then here's nine o'clockish:


And at this late hour there is something large back towards the Wilkesboros which, should it somehow hang together, could deliver another half an inch easy. It may slide north, or it may fizzle out. Or it may once more send water in under the front wall of my office out back, as yet unrenovated, happily, and also formerly a peanut shop, says La Vieja Nueva, and about which more another, less weathery time. For now: it rained. It rained like this was the last chance it was going to have to rain. We're now almost an inch over our average for June, and it's June the three. For now: let's get you back to your regular programming, which may already be in progress. This is ANYLF, reporting live from the ark.