We are in the midst of a huge storm, and about to have some pretty bad flooding, like 11 feet at the bridge in Guerneville, and that's a big bunch of water. It was around this time of year that it happened 3 or 4 years ago, and then it was just a couple of feet over the bridge, enough to snarl traffic. And we had only one day when we were trapped in our tiny town, by rockslide north of us, road collapse south of us, and flooding to the east. We could have gotten out only to the west, by boat, if we had one. Well, we did have a canoe, but there were 2 foot combers out there. Man, you have never seen a temper tantrum till you've seen what Mother Nature does to the coast during a storm. The river would get all churned up and turn to foamy cafe au lait, and whole trees would float downstream to Jenner beach, where they would pile up and sometime during the summer, burn, either on purpose or the result of homeless people not putting out their fires. Occasionally, a renegade propane tank would scoot by. And, of course, the power would go off, and not come on for days and days after the rest of the county. If we were lucky, the tarp would not have blown off the pile of firewood and it would not be all wet, because we heated the house with the woodstove. Ah, the joys of a house on the hill over the river and sea!
Town is different. The power stays on, or, if it should go off, PG&E scrambles to get it back so their profit-margin doesn't decline. Streets get some big puddles, but even our neighborhood turkeys can navigate through them. I just heard that downtown San Anselmo is flooded, which is a shame; why couldn't that happen on a workday, when my friend Taylor could stay home?
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