‘Starting to look a lot better’: Rain aids Mosquito fire battle, but brings flood, mudflow risk
When you head out for your morning run, you have to face a certain amount of risk, both tangible and intangible. That is the way the weather was this morning.
At 7:15 this morning, as I ran, wind was blowing from my right and the morning sun was behind me.
But out in the open water, my heart began to beat a little faster. And I wondered whether it might not be time to put on my running shoes.
I know what you are thinking. You are probably thinking, “That’s a dumb thing to think,” right? Well, it kind of is. But when you put on your running shoes the first thing you know you got a little closer to the truth. (Not that you would ever be able to run much through such a morning.)
After all, we have not always had such great weather here in the Triangle region. In fact, the weather did not always seem good. We have had two severe floods in the area this year, and we have had one of our worst droughts, with an unseasonably warm and hot period that saw temperatures in the 70s.
That is the way the rain seemed to be in this morning’s forecast.
At 7:12, the National Weather Service had issued a flood watch for the region, which included the city of Raleigh, as well as the northern parts of the Cumberland and Perquimans rivers.
Here at our office we were aware of those two flooding dangers, but we were unsure of how severe these dangers were.
The flood watch mentioned that at this early stage of the storm, there was a 30% chance of serious flooding. By 8:11, that had grown to a 50% chance of flooding.
If you are out in the middle of the rivers this morning, you are probably wondering how you could have gotten to this point. I know how I got to this point. I just did a little search on YouTube.
After the flooding that occurred in September, 2013, we started receiving reports of trees being swept down the rivers at a significant rate. According to one expert, floodwaters could reach two feet deep in