Rita stopped by

 

                            

 

Rita visited WNY.  She blew in late last evening and decided she would stay a bit.  First, I want to say, I in know way think her visit here could compare to the Gulf Coast.  The devastation she left down south is a gazillion times worse than here.  She was basically an inconvenience to us, and decided to just hang out for a bit.   

She quietly snuck into our area in the middle of the night.  No thunder, no lightening and not enough wind to wake me out of my slumber.  When my alarm went off this morning I thought I had messed up the timing because it was still very dark.  It usually is pretty dark, but this morning there was no glimmer of light.  I rubbed my eyes, rolled over and lifted the blinds to see I had a little pond forming on my front yard.  I got up and started to move.  Standing at the counter making coffee I could see the darkness in the sky and see the steady stream of rain coming down.  It wasn't a hard soaking rain, I could see it but not really hear it.  I flipped on the news to see what they had to say and of course they were reporting flooding in low lying areas.  Apparently some areas had as much as 3 inches of rain.  

I went through my morning routine and grabbed my camera on the way out.  I thought I could get pictures of my nice little pond, but it was pretty much gone.  The rain had stopped but the sky was still dark, lots of black and grays moving rather quickly.  When I jumped on the highway to head downtown it looked as though the skyline had disappeared into the 'black hole.'  Mind you our skyline isnot anything spectacular like NYC, Dallas, Chicago, but we have one.  Just not this morning!  

Off and on all day the rain came.  Sometimes so hard you could hear it pounding on the roof of our building.  Other times you wouldn't know it was raining unless you looked out the window.  Even then, you'd have to really look as the windows were covered with drops all day.    

As I drove home the skyline was back, as I drove down Main St. to get back on the highway I pulled over to get a shot of the sky.  It was just starting to rain once more so I took the picture out my front window.  Didn't come out to bad except for the few drops that landed after I turned off my wipers.  The rain came pretty heavy on my drive home but the closer I got to my house it had pretty much lightened up to nothing.  I thought to myself- I have my camera, I'll stop and take pictures of the same places I went on Saturday.  Well, the intention was good, but when I got there it was a mess and I was still dressed from work.  What was I thinking??  I grabbed one shot of the creek, but I had to zoom in a bit more as I wasn't getting as close as I had before.  No way, no how!  Remember, my aura?  Anyway, I put the pictures side by side and pointed out a rock so you could see how much higher the water was.  You will also notice the cliff type bank is about gone.  

Before I could do anymore the sky opened up and I decided I was done.  I got back to my car just as the torrential rains started again.  My wipers going so fast I thought they'd fly off.  Been there done that and in no mood to experience that again.  I will say, I don't think I ever used that speed on my wipers before.  If I had to drive any further with them going that fast I could have gone into seizures.  Before I got home it stopped again and I decided to try and get some sky shots.   

You may lose some of the effects since I made them smaller and combined them on one jpg.  LOL still playing with the program I have and decided to try and merge them together.   

The rain is done and they say all in all some places got 5 inches.  Like I said Katrina and Rita left a whole lot more damage in the Gulf Coast, but I thought I'd share.