Storms

For those of you in deep drought, you’d probably love to have my problem. It’s the rain. Thunderstorms are normal here in northern New Hampshire, but not like this. When we get rain it’s been unusually heavy.

Recently there was an article in the Portland Press Herald (Portland ME). A scientific study discovered that storms really have been getting worse in New England and they’ve been doing so for 50 or 60 years. That squares with what I’ve observed.

Our roads are showing a lot of damage from the storms. Road damage in the spring is normal. Snow melt and spring rains have always taken their toll. The difference now is that the damage continues all summer. We got flash floods that we only rarely had before. There’s road damage in places that never had problems. The rain comes down so hard and in such volume normal drainage can’t handle it.

The damage isn’t that visible on the highways or in the cities. It’s the rural areas that are really suffering. Road shoulders are getting washed out in so many places the road agents can’t keep up. All they can do is to mark the worse places with traffic cones.

The washouts are getting deeper and deeper. Now that the shoulders are gone, the pavement is breaking up and sliding away. In recent years the town road budget has not kept up. Some roads have been depaved because they could no longer afford to patch them. It would not surprise me if that happens to my road eventually.

So . . . for you people in drought, we have your rain, but it’s not doing us much good.

-Sixbears