The Storm

This is not an entry about Hurricane Katrina. This is an entry about the thunderstorm we experienced yesterday, Wednesday in Ocean Springs Mississippi. Yesterday was supposed to be my first full day off in twelve days, and like any day off it's beauty was in the fact that I had no particular plans except to maybe go work out, and hopefully do some writing and reading.

However sometime around four o'clock in the morning a thunderstorm began and the sky opened up and rain poured fourth like I have never seen before. There was thunder and lightning - which didn't really phase me except to wake me and inspire me to quietly Thank God I had shelter and a warm bed to sleep in during the storm.

Normally, I really enjoy thunderstorms. I think it's somehow romantic to listen to the rain. But right now in a Hurricane Relief Volunteer camp it's not so cool. There is a tangible difference in the energy of the camp when the sky is cloudy and it thunders and rains. People walk around all ashen faced and jumpy as though another hurricane could sneak up on them at a moment's notice. The atmosphere in town is of morose resignation as though - The weather will kill us ... or not.

Around 7 a.m. (the lights didn't come on as they usually do at six because we had no power at about that time I realized the emgergency lights were on in my room) I sat up and thought Wow! It's really Raining! My dorm room (with no ceiling so you can hear any conversation anywhere in the building) is right next to the back door which was being slammed repeatedly from 6:00 on as people ran in and out to look at the rain and remark loudly upon on it. It was through these loud conversations as I tried to sleep that I learned:
The roads were flooded
No volunteers were able to go out on construction work that day
School was canceled
A tornado hit and damaged 10 rooms of the middle school building a block away (which has not been used as a school since Katrina). (Mississippi has tornados but it doesn't have tornado sirens. I think people figure what's the point since they don't have basements anyway. On the bayou the watertable is so high, you can't have a basement.)
A screaming woman who saw the tornado hit the school ran up to our back door seeking refuge

Finally I decided to get out of bed and check out this rain. I should have stayed in bed because visability was absolutely zero as white sheets of water poured off of our roof. I thought to myself This is what it was like when it rained for 40 days.
I know know what Arthur Miller meant when he wrote in The Crucible "I will fall like an Ocean upon that courtroom"

You would have thought it hadn't rained at all since last year and that this was the result of all the evaporation in Mississippi over the entire summer for it to rain like this!
It was the closest thing to a Monsoon I have ever seen!

After visiting the kitchen for a muffin and being surprised and releived to find volunteers sitting at the cafeteria tables with emergency candles lit listening to a worship band sing songs like "I praise you in the storm" I decided being helpful was over-rated and that I was going back to bed. On my way I ran into a staff member and Mississippi native in the hallway who muttered "this is the deep south no one wants to know about." I turned to her and said "Is this a tropical storm?" having never experienced anything like this before, I was unsure, but confident it wasn't a hurricane or we would have known about it (and probably evacuated) ahead of time and because there wasn't much wind. (Katrina had winds of 175mph).

"No," she said. "this is just how it rains down here."

The long and short of it is that ALL the volunteers were routed into the distribution center yesterday, but it was my day off so I was not about to jump in and work at structuring their activities. We have had a lot more volunteers than usual lately and are seeing a lot fewer clients. Plus no one comes out - not even for free groceries - when it's raining, so you can imagine what it's like during a torrential downpour.

These volutneers had nothing to do but reorganize things then express their frustration at not having enough work and then they eventually gave up and took up reading or napping. Many found productive tasks to do in the kitchen or placing buckets under the many MANY leaks in our roof. For the most part - it was like indoor recess in a Kindergarten classroom.

Needless to say my day off was unproductive because I couldn't leave the building though I did manage to sleep for nearly 10 hours.

I believe we got over 4 inches of rain in one day.