The last 48 hours brought to mind that old Sunday School song which has the lyrics about Noah building God an arky arky and bringing in the animals by twosies twosies.
We have been in the bullseye of Tropical Storm Fay for those many hours. The news media have called this a historic storm in this area. That is a fancy way of saying that we have broken rainfall records. Many streets in Palm Bay and Melbourne areas are flooded and close to impassable. In Indialantic, we have already had to help evacuate one of our older parishioners on oxygen. I was thoroughly soaked before it was over.
The head of the weather department at NASA has just been quoted on the Weather Channel as saying that some of their gages have measured over 24 inches of rain. (The Weather Channel is reporting 25 inches of rain in less than 48 hours.) Fay has intensified to 50 miles per hour. The eye is over Titusville, and the Russian Orthodox priest there told me that they have had sunny weather for nearly 24 hours. Unfortunately, our area is in the southern area of the storm, so we are receiving massive amounts of rain.
The road in front of my driveway is flooded to a level of between my knee and my ankle. The retention pond behind our house and the one to the side are nearly flooded over, so we may have to evacuate ourselves. We have, however, just received the good news that Fay has begun to move north at 2 miles per hour after hanging stationary for nearly 24 hours. Our rainfall rates have finally fallen to less than an inch an hour, though it is still at nearly half an inch an hour, and at least 6 inches more of rain are expected before we are through.
Fay was supposed to be a reasonable storm. But no one expected it to hang on so long. Up in Satellite Beach, raw sewage is now mixing with the flooding. Interestingly enough, it does show what persistent effort will do. (I can hear a sermon coming.) So, do keep the communities of Melbourne and Palm Bay in your prayers.
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