Deluge!!

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Do you believe weather forecasts? I pay little attention to them, because it seems 90% of the time, no dire prediction comes true. I saw that thunderstorms were predicted before I went to town. I wasn’t going to sit around waiting for nothing to show up. I parked near Great Clips and walked in under a cloudless sky. My back was to the storefront. I enjoyed watching the young woman quickly cut my hair, paid for the service, and sat down to put in my hearing aids. Standing up, I took four steps, turned to the door, and saw the parking lot had disappeared behind a wall of heavy rain. An untranslatable sound escaped from my mouth, to which a male customer responded. “Didn’t expect that, did you?”

I was heading to the physical therapy place next door and quickly ducked under the eave of the building for those few steps. Every so often I go back to ask Fletcher to remove one or two exercises and add something new. The goal is to keep my phone session updated and under 20 minutes. He was the one who suggested I could keep coming back, and he is still willing to make changes for me. I wonder if there is anyone else who does this, but I won’t ask. It keeps me involved and looking forward to something that is essentially boring.

I dropped the envelope with my requests on the desk and asked if I could stay there until the heaviest of the rain passed. Fletcher was working with only one patient, and he included me in the conversation. It was like old times! When the man left, I stayed a few more minutes until the rain finally lessened.

I didn’t expect anything unusual when I opened the door of the car. I got in quickly, and I’m sure my eyes opened quite wide with surprise. I was sitting in a rain-saturated seat! There was nothing to do but keep going. I had forgotten I left the window open about an inch to let the heat escape. Instead, I had invited the rain inside. When I pulled into the garage and got out, I found the back of my jeans was wet from my waist to my knees!

I called the rain a deluge. My expectation that the weather would not change was delusional!

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Published by Anne Mehrling

I'm a retiree who loves to write about life in the mountains of North Carolina.

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30 thoughts on “Deluge!!”

  1. We find that weather forecasts are rarely accurate but do like to keep an eye on the radar if rain is predicted. At least your two destinations were next door to each other. Having a wet car and jeans is not the worst thing that could have happened. At least you weren’t driving when that came down.

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  3. Oh no, I left my car window over night one time and of course it poured all night. Let’s say it was not a pleasure when I sat behind the wheel in the morning… as you now know too.
    As fir the forecast, it’s quite simple here in Ireland: dry sunny spells and scattering showers 11 months a year then we have two weeks of freezing temperatures and possibly snow and two of heatwave warning ( temperatures over 22 degrees) when they remind you that it’s ok even to sleep without your pjs in such extreme conditions 🤣first time I heard it I couldn’t believe it coming from a country where over summer there is still 35 degree at 8 in the evening.

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  7. My husband leaves the car windows down ALL THE TIME!! His car is pretty old and with all the water taken on the seats, it does not small all that wonderful.

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  8. I have a sunroof that I never open because I ALWAYS forget it. Got rain in once on my last car. That was it. I wouldn’t have a sunroof but it came with the package that had the safety features I wanted.

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  9. Weather predictions here are not something I put much faith in. I try to prepare just in case, but that is not an easy thing to do. Sometimes they change the forecast three or four times a day. I am sorry about your wet seat and you getting caught in the unexpected rainfall. They keep saying rain for us but so far nothing but high heat and humidity.

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      1. You gave me a chuckle with the dice. One of ours shakes his head sometimes. I feel for them trying to predict was is going to happen. My grandpa was very good at predicting the weather, he had no radar or any kind of tools like they have today. I think the weather is more extreme now than in earlier years.

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  11. Ever since Helene, I’ve taken a better safe than sorry approach. I didn’t believe the reports ahead of the hurricane, having been through many before. But a lesson was learned the hard way with that one. I didn’t prepare adequately, and will not make that mistake again. I’d rather be out with an umbrella and not get rain than to be caught unawares again.

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