warm times, wet times

an observation

The weather is staying above sixty (sometimes above seventy, too; it was eighty and ninety when I was gone on vacation I hear.). And wet pretty often, so far. I'm not used to warm ever mingling with wet. In Seattle, it's cold/cool and drizzly nine and a half months of the year. Then there is the glorious july and august where it's warm and dry, and we go back to our rainy seasons stunned by how lovely summer was for a good few months.

Not so much dryness here... quite humid already. And lots of thundershowers, with loud thunder and lightning, and much more aggressive rain. Today it was raining so hard, and so much, a few coworkers and I stopped our corporate drudgery for a few minutes to observe and mock the runners/crouchers on Broadway from the 12th floor above. Looked like Frogger. The size of the raindrops was incredible. Made being in the office kind of a relief for a few minutes.

The rain brings runoff (now I'm getting into technical jargon, I know, stick with me), and it makes a relatively gross combination here in New York. The sidewalks are the receptacles of every vile substance you can imagine -dogs, drunks, thousands of bags of garbage waiting for pickup everyday, innumerable things I'd like to not have to describe. When it rains, it cleanses, but it's also releasing and moving all that filth around, and the pedestrians are caught in the muck. Somehow the drains here are often set right at the crosswalk, which makes for torrential rivers of drainage rushing into pools forming where you step down into the street, or when it backs up, and oh it does, it's these deep ponds of god-knows-what's-floating-in-there, creeping up the wheelchair ramps to the sidewalk. It's no wonder Wellies are so characteristic on the feet of New York ladies. I've already wrecked a couple pairs of ballet flats. They back up the most dramatically in the snow, when the melt begins and slush clogs them up for yards. It seems like we'll be marooned on the sidewalk in all seasons, though, from what I've heard about the 100-degree humidity of summer.

Who thought of putting storm drains at crosswalk intersections? When did planners think that was the best alternative? Seriously, what 1905 engineer strategized this, I want to understand the rationale.

I was just thinking about how when a raindrop falls on your head, it has fallen thousands and thousands of feet. Shouldn't that hurt? Kind of blowing my mind.