Coyote Blog

Phoenix hit with rains and flooding.  Where's FEMA?  Where's Bush?  Where's my $2000 Visa card?  The government is intentially ignoring us because, uh, we're all rich white people with plastic surgery.  I heard that tens of refugees were all trapped in a local Hooters for hours and hours with no national gaurd to protect them. 

Below is the Indian Bend Wash mentioned in the article, which is next to my house:

LOL, the whole town was laughing at the national coverage our morning rainstorm got.  Drive time DJ's were particularly mocking Wolf Blitzers breathless commentary.  They were interviewing people who had panicked calls from out of town relatives who had seen the coverage, only to meet with confused shrugs of local residents who may not even have noticed.

The rain lasted barely longer than an hour, and the streets were dry by the time I went to get the kids from school.  We did have flash flooding in our "washes" (what we call dry river beds) but that is to be expected since desert soil does not absorb water quickly and so you get a lot of water runoff.  Also, Phoenix has few storm sewers -- it accepts the fact that things flood once every two years or so, and accepts the costs involved as cheaper than building more infrastructure, which I think is correct.  The golf course is flooded (creating a new island-green) because that's where we put golf courses here - in the dry river bottoms.  The grass grows better there and the land can't be used for anything else and its only a couple of adays a year they get flooded out.

(By the way, yeah, I know I screwed up stitching together the panorama - some of the tree trunks don't match.  I was in a bit of a hurry)