From Tokyo With Love

While we were away last week I saw on the news that Tokyo was hit by a typhoon. The trains were knocked out, there were severe floods, and all this was accompanied by very high winds. I was glad, therefore, to have missed suffering through that storm by being in Japan one week later rather than earlier. Little did I know that this would be a mess I'd miss twice.

Somehow, the storm made its way across the Pacific largely intact, hitting the Bay Area coastline Tuesday of this week resulting in, you guessed it, sever flooding and strong winds. (Doubtless it would have stopped the trains too except the USA barely has any of those things worthy of the name any more. It did stop the cars though when they closed Highway 17)

This two day storm dumped some 10 inches of rain where we live and, thanks largely to falling trees, took power out for over a day. Yup, missed the whole shooting match once again by being in Tokyo, much to the chagrin of those left back at home to clean up the mess. Still, at least we had a decent period of notice and I was able to clean up the roof, gutters and gulleys before leaving, which seems to have helped us get through it reasonably intact.

Looks like this will be quite a wet winter. After all, it's only just started and we've had 25% of what we got in the entire season last year hit the ground already ....