So What Is A Cubit, Anyway?

We've had A LOT of rain here... like 15 inches in 5 days. Everything is flooding. The drive to work (approx 33 miles each way) has taken two hours each way every day this week. Right now, it's pick your favorite weather advisory - all of these are currently active: thunderstorm watch, tornado warning, flood warning, severe weather watch, tornado watch, coastal flooding watch, wind advisory... and I might have missed one or two.


Yesterday, I left work at 5:00 based on a friend's recommendation that if I didn't leave then, I would be staying in town for the night. The road was mostly standing water and at one particular intersection, it was over a foot deep and rising fast.

What is currently amazing me is how nonchalant everyone is about the situation. Everyone who's been here a while has told me that it hasn't been this bad since [Hurricane] Floyd came through and then they go on to regale me with tales of their cars being under water and standing on their cars and still being chest high. These are the same people who freak the f*ck completely out over even a mention, a mere HINT, of snow. This is baffling to me.

I live in one of the town's historic districts, and while I chose it because I love the houses, it occurred to me that the house has stood for over a hundred years - odds seemed good that it'd survive whatever comes next. This theory proved correct yet again. One problem with this theory: I didn't really take into account getting TO and FROM my nice dry house. That has posed more of a challenge since it is situated on the only high ground - which means that it is surrounded by low ground.


As a matter of fact, last night was quite a challenge. I ran over something while sloshing through a bit over a foot of water and it shredded one tire and scuffed up another. I have no jack in my Jeep. I spent three hours sitting in my jeep in the pouring rain, waiting for the tow truck. That was awesome. So today I spent some quality time at the tire place, replacing two tires. (And having to do that TODAY with what I'm doing this weekend makes me all kinds of happy!)

In the photo below, you can kind of see the water thru the raindrops - the field is completely flooded, so is the drainage ditch and there was about four inches of standing water on the road - for several miles.


This is normally a fairly small little river. It's swollen to more than 3 times its normal width.





At this point, even the ducks are soggy and irritated. My plan is to cuddle in with some hot cocoa and work out the plans for the ark that I'm going to build in my (not flooded yet) backyard. So what is a cubit, anyway?