Rain Rain Can Be a Pain

Don't get me wrong. I like rain, the wonderful summer hose smell of the ground after it has showered for a while, the dewy grass, and even the puddles, which I am just childish enough to dabble in, wetting my shoes and sometimes even my socks. But the rain in this area, when it finally does let loose, can bring some problems alien to other, wetter places.
First of all, people in this place don't know how to deal with rain. Their umbrellas have been sitting in the closet so long they get moth holes or disintegrate or break. They don't know how to drive in the rain either. Of course, it doesn't help that there is no drainage on the roads and the soil doesn't absorb very much water. Rain, even a light rain, can mean pile ups and slow downs and big big accidents sometimes too because drivers sometimes don't have enough sense to slow down.
Sometimes it floods, and that can happen really fast. I was once trying to cross the street from the shopping center across the street from my apartment. During the half an hour or so I was in the market, a flood poured into the street and made it impassable. It hadn't even been raining when I went into the store, but when I came out, there were cars floating by, a dead dog, and terrified people hanging onto poles on the islands in the middle of the street.
The only way I escaped from that disaster was by begging a ride with a gigantic SUV, which drove me across the street to my house. But just as when someone is contemplating a jump from a window sill, there were "cheerleaders" on the corner urging me to jump into the white water, where I certainly would have drowned, particularly because I can't swim, despite many years of attempted swimming lessons. Truthfully though, I haven't seen anything like that for a number of years now.
Then there are other kinds of flood, brewing in areas where there have been fires. People who live in rural areas or areas at the edge of the known world/suburb are very vulnerable to fire, and when all the trees and brush burn off, to flood and mudslides. There are any number of ways to meet your maker in this place. Poor Reb, whose family has been evacuated so many times, could tell you about this, couldn't you, Reb?
So when I am sitting quietly in my house, reading and listening to the relaxing sound of raindrops on the roof and the windows, I wonder in the back of my mind if someone will wake me up at 2AM screaming in my ear that I have to get out, that the water is rising in the living room, that the safe and the normal is not really safe at all, but the harbinger of disaster.