Reminder to Mother Nature: The Arts Festival Is Over

So, in case you weren't in the county last night, I should inform you that the city flooded. It honest-to-goodness flooded, during this impressive thunderstorm, slightly post-rush hour. It flooded so badly that concrete steps were transformed into miniature waterfalls, cars were floating away near Winchester Thurston, and some poor lady was forced to wade through waist-deep water to cross an intersection on Shady Avenue, whereupon she informed us that we were probably going to have to turn the car around.

(I should warn you here that what follows is only going to be fond memories of the flood. I am not going to cheapen natural disasters to presume that they don't have the capacity to devastate and cause loads of damage, but I'll leave it up to the Pittsburgh news stations to bring the bad news and the scary numbers. Instead, to lighten the mood, I'll bring you a cheerful take on monsoon-like rain in the Steel City. Okay, disclaimer over.)

I was fascinated by this flood. I am quite the weather aficionado, which is probably one of the reasons that Los Angeles and I never quite got along. And for someone who obsessively checks the Weather Channel, Pittsburgh is an ideal place to live. Once, when I was a child, we had such a terrific ice storm overnight that not only did 1) we have a totally surprising snow day from school, but 2) the neighbor's beagle slid from their front yard the entire way across the space between our houses and into the very bottom of the hill that was our back yard. Imagine my surprise when I was off from school and also needed to assist in an emergency pooch rescue!

But while we all have our favorite snow stories (Blizzard of '93, anyone?), flood stories seem to be much less common. Okay, yes, the Mon Wharf floods all the time, and I remember at least a few times when the 10th Street Bypass has overflown with the Allegheny River, but I'm talking things on a larger scale. I'm talking Charleston, SC style floods, where the only thing you can do is take off your shoes and marvel at where all that water is coming from.

In fact, I just Googled 'notable Pittsburgh floods,' and aside from the ones I am going to mention, the only thing that comes up is from 1937, when the Ohio River apparently went overboard in several different states.

In my life (including last night), I can remember two significant Pittsburgh floods. Well, three, if you count our fifth grade production of "Penn's Woods," a creative Pennsylvania history play that involved a reenactment of the Johnstown Flood where we dumped a gallon jug of water on top of some Lego houses. But that one did not have the same awe-inspiring moments of my first *real* Pittsburgh flood. It was that first true flood that forever endeared me to four inches of rain per hour.

The first gigantic flood was a result of Hurricane Ivan, in September 2004. At the time, I was in grad school and working three jobs, one of which was teaching a high school color guard. Every Friday night, I was stuck attending high school football games instead of joining my classmates for weekend happy hour. You see, the administration had chosen to give our class the worst Friday schedule ever: we were in class from 8:30am straight through until 4 or 4:30. Conveniently however, Mad Mex in Oakland began their happy hour at 4:30pm.

If you've never been to Mad Mex, 'happy hour' in 2006 meant 22 ounce margaritas were only $6.00. To put this in perspective, in Los Angeles, a single-shot well vodka drink would run you about $4.50. What better way to kick off a weekend of heavy studying than a brain freeze from 22 ounces of frozen raspberries and tequila??

But never for me. No, instead, I was braving rush hour traffic on the Liberty Bridge to go watch seventeen year olds try to act like NFL stars for several hours and hear the school's fight song played over, and over, and over (the team went undefeated and made it to the WPIAL playoffs, which managed to extend the season from rainy to snowy). Our entire class was sitting at the bar, unwinding and chowing down on nachos, while I was leading flag warmups on the track.

And then, the fateful day: September 17, 2004. Hurricane Ivan had been raging about in the south, as hurricanes are wont to do, but it was just beginning to travel up north. I was sitting in our OTC Medications afternoon class, dreading the trip out to the South Hills that night, because even though we deal with it all the time, Pittsburgh drivers are notoriously bad at navigating in rainy weather. Suddenly, my phone rang - it was the band director!

The anticipated rainfall was so bad that they actually postponed the football game that night!! SQUEE! I could barely contain my excitement for the remaining two hours of poison ivy self care.

As soon as class let out, I ran to the door like a puppy excited for her first snowfall. And there, outside, was the most torrential downpour I'd ever seen!! The rain was coming down in sheets! By the time I made it the entire way down the hill to my apartment, my pants were soaked up above the knees, and my Birkenstocks were doing that slimy-feeling-thing that they tend to do while wet.

But never one to pass up a cheap margarita opportunity, I dropped my bookbag inside the doorway of my apartment and ran (in the rain) the two blocks to Mad Mex, where six or so of my girlfriends were waiting at the huge round table in the back.

(You know it is a sign that you are supposed to be at Mad Mex when your large group manages to secure that back table.)

We ordered a round of margaritas and nachos, and started the process of tracking down our significant others and families. However, flood-panic had set everybody's tend-and-befriend instincts into overdrive, and the Verizon cell phone lines were jammed (to say nothing of the fact that landline phones were almost definitely out in all areas of the city). I finally got ahold of my parents, who were safe and sound.

By the time our second order of nachos arrived, we decided we had no choice but to wait out the storm at Mad Mex. The second round of 22 ounce margaritas was ordered, and then the third order of nachos... And finally, as the sun was beginning to set, the rain had slowed enough that we were all able to (after remembering how to ask for the check) cash out and go back to our respective homes. I was warm, dry, and asleep by 7:30 that evening.

Ahh, college. And Pittsburgh weather, saving the day in its own backward way.

So last night, when the power went out three times while my husband and I were completing the mortgage application for our new house, and we wound up having to use our broker's laptop screen to generate enough light to see where to sign, I could do little but laugh and shrug. As we were twice rerouted on our drive home from Squirrel Hill, I pointed out each mini lake with an exclamation of, 'look at THAT one!' And as we ran from the car to the back door, all I could think about was where in Bloomfield we could go to get huge, cheap margaritas while we watched the rain fill up the streets...