This may not be normal...

One of the things they don't tell you about when you move to the East Coast is that they have this little phenomenon called a Nor'easter. Basically it's a storm. More specifically, it describes a "low pressure area whose center of rotation is just off the coast and whose leading winds in the left forward quadrant rotate onto land from the northeast. The precipitation pattern is similar to other extratropical storms. They also can cause coastal flooding, coastal erosion and gale force winds."

For now: let's just focus on the flooding part of that equation....

It rained here for about 2 days straight over the weekend, and Monday night Mother Nature went medieval on our collective asses. Picture Hurricane Katrina, without the impoverished families in boats. I live by a river - but by no means can I lean out my window and feed the geese swimming by. This river is across the road, down a hill...completely out of sight. Usually.

But Monday night, all the runoff from the storm caused the river to massively flood - and it rose up into my whole complex in the span of about 2 hours. Some cars were able to get out - but my parking space happens to be in a low spot, and it flooded with about 5 feet of water before they could come up and get me.

It was hard to even get down into the garage, as all the stairways were flooded too. I'm not a Physicist or anything - but when I finally got to my car,I think the technical term for what the Acura was doing was 'floating'. Water had completely covered the dash, and it was totally flooded inside. I just kinda laughed and took some pictures. The guy who owned the Denali across from me was less enthused. There's no standard emotional response for when you see your very new luxury automobile doing the backstroke.

This all happened about 5:00pm, and afterward I was hanging around outside with some of the other residents - watching the mayhem. As people would return home from work (many walk or take trains and subways to work) - they come home, see the flooding, and freak. Literally freak. The most common response was, verbatim, "What the @#$!!" Kind of a case study in human emotion. I particularly felt bad for the guy who had a Porche go under. I became a bit of an information kiosk and grief counselor for those that took it hard.

They pumped the water out Tuesday afternoon, and fished my car out. It's totaled, and now sitting in some salvage yard in Jersey. I think I'll have an insurance check by Friday, and then I'll go buy a new car. "Lexus" always had a nice ring to it...but we'll see.

All in all - you gotta put something like this in perspective. It's just a car - and in light of the shootings in Virginia, life could be much worse. My company also will lease me a car - so maybe I'll just take a free car from them...so it's not all bad.

Here's some more pics as the saga unfolded... The flooded streets, the water receding a bit, and then my car after it got out from the pool.