Who'll Stop the Rain?

"I went down Virginia, seeking shelter from the storm."
—Creedence Clearwater Revival



News Flash: There isn't shelter from the rain—at least not in my part of Virginia. The last few days have been rainy with a vengeance. This has been the rainiest May I can remember.

For a while, I rejoiced in the rain. We'd had a couple of years of drought. The water table was low. We needed rain.

Finally we got it. And then we got more. And more. Etc. We've been unable to cut hay, although the hay was ready to cut three weeks ago. A pond now covers a good portion of the kennel. Maggie loves it; the other dogs don't. Maggie is no longer black and white; she's black and red mud-colored. The grass grows faster than John can mow it. You get the picture.

Speaking of pictures, here are a few I've taken lately. This one was taken day before yesterday after we'd had a few really heavy downpours. Still looks ominous toward Smith Mountain.


On Wednesday, John and I went to Westlake; traveling down Route 122, we hit hard rain in Wirtz but Rocky Mount was relatively dry. Returning from Rocky Mount, we hit more hard rain between Redwood and Glade Hill. Really hard rain. At home, we noticed a lot of puddles, leaves down, our patio flooded, and our garden flattened. All of the cat dishes overflowed with water, so we must have gotten at least two inches. About five minutes later, several firetrucks went down our road—a large barn about two miles from us burned to the ground. A lightning strike, maybe?

A bit after I took the above picture, the sky looked like this from my front yard:


You can see another storm moving across. Anyhow, Thursday, I went to LP's Beauty Shop in Union Hall fro my 2:00 p.m. haircut. Just before I left home, John called me from Rocky Mount to tell me he was in the midst of a bad storm. On the way to the beauty shop, I saw big strikes of lightning, maybe in Glade Hill or east of Glade Hill.

Rain started not long after I went through the door. Then the rain came harder—and horizontal. Lisa told me that Wednesday the rain was so hard that they couldn't open the door, and hail fell.

Lisa's daughter turned on the radio. The news—tornado warning! Especially for west of Penhook. Uh-oh. We were west of Penhook. Rain pounded, but no tornado struck.

When the rain let up, I drove the 2.2 miles home. Water washing across the road in numerous places forced me to drive at a crawl. Ditches filled with water; a few lawns sported ponds. But I made it OK.

As soon as I was inside, I turned on the TV. Tornado warnings were posted for Pittsylvania County (I'm a couple of miles west of the county line). It looked bad for the Gretna area. But we got plenty of rain—I'm guessing another two inches or so. Flood warnings abounded for us and all the surrounding counties.

After things cleared a bit, I took a few more pictures:


Clouds obscure Smith Mountain (above). However, there was a break in the clouds right overhead.


Toward the east, though—where the tornado warning was, the sky looked ominous:


This morning, rain fell again. As I post this, we're down to sprinkles. The weatherman predicts sun for tomorrow. I'll believe it when I see it.

"And I wonder, still I wonder, who'll stop the rain?"
~