The Weather Outside…
The snowstorm this weekend was epic and beautiful. I had 12 inches on top of my grill, considerably less than some areas to the north of Richmond, but still pretty much unheard of for this area in December. When I was a kid, a white Christmas happened occasionally but not in great depths and has been nonexistent for years except for flurries or nasty grayish stuff left on the ground from a snowfall earlier in the month. Snow in December is not unknown, just uncommon.
Three weather events in this region stick out in my mind. The first was in February 1994 when three inches of ice fell across a wide portion of the state. Thousands of trees came down, power outages were massive and major highways were unpassable for days, even weeks in some spots.
In September 2003, Hurricane Isabel hit and the effects were much the same as with the ice storm but more devastating. I had a 70-foot tree come down on my house in the middle of it (in the night, of course) and my downstairs was flooded.  Removal of the tree, a new roof truss and roof and some room reconstruction followed a la the insurance company but I was out of pocket for the flood damage to the tune of about $4,000. The latter turned out to be a double disaster as I got taken by an unscrupulous contractor and had to hire another one to fix the work the first one did, another $3,000.
Still, I was very lucky with that re-do. I was lying in a hospital bed after a heart attack and open heart surgery when Tropical Storm Gaston hit in August 2004 and that one re-flooded my downstairs. Fortunately, my second–and wonderful–contractor had not yet put in any of the new floor and walls. Gaston will go down in memory for many Richmonders as it dumped more than 12 inches of rain on us in a few hours and, surely, none of us will forget the video of the tractor trailer floating on a downtown street.
Oh, yeah, and then there was the major flooding we got by being downriver from the mountain areas hit by Hurricane Camille (1969), Hurricane Agnes (1972) and the Election Day Flood in Roanoke (1985). Hmm…I’m sensing a pattern here.
Picture courtesy of Annie.
Anyway, I’ve enjoyed a few days of pristine beauty (enjoyed because the kitties and I never lost power and have had plenty of food) but, alas, tomorrow I really must get out there and dig out my car.
December 22, 2009
Posted in: Tales of a Bookseller
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