Rainstorm in Tacoma - or, Thursday (of Sunday, Wednesday, and Thursday)

When I left the drugstore with my snapshots rain was pouring down.  Just a half-hour before it was sunny, I had waited in the park for the 1-hour photo and the ground was quite dry, only a little wisps of dew-like damp from the earlier light rain.  

According to my bus schedule booklet, a bus was to be along shortly, I headed to the stop and saw it coming at the light a block behind me. As I got on there was thunder and a flash of lightning, and the driver was at work with an interactive narrative with the riders.  "Lightning!" she said.

 

She must have been on the route all the way from Parkland when the rain began.  (Click on the haiku below for something of what she must have seen.) 

 

From the route of sun

at the hill's wide-screen landscape

clouds pour down deep rain

 

She must have said something like "Look at this come down!" at the transit center downtown. This discussion developed, and yet remained reasonable and respectful, at the entry to the Tacoma Community College transit center:  the drains there had flooded so deeply that there were two cars marooned in the flooding street.  The bus was tall enough to go through, ("Great work, bus driver!", and "Yay!  Bus Driver!") but as we went through, water was entering through the doors, it washed around the bus floor.  (During the interactive discussion I tapped on the shoulder of a rider with earbuds to show him the rainwater washing around on the bus floor.) 

 

I planned to transfer and the #16 was there.  The raindrops were very large, after I went under a transit center shelter briefly, I went across the wet pavement to the #16 and boarded.  The driver was to go - he went out to check with a supervisor closer to the flooded Mildred Street.  He detoured along 19th to Jackson Street, then turned at 12th Street, skipping only the TCC stops, where sheriff's cars and the obvious marooned cars and the huge flooded area showed why a bus might not stop there. 

As the bus left the transit center on the 19th Street side, I saw a similar flooded area behind us on 19th.  The bus was about fifteen minutes late when it reached Washington School.  Washington School, which has been in the rain for a hundred years, and is now undergoing restoration.   

If the library had been open until eight o'clock I probably would have gone in to Share on Facebook.  But I would have had only about ten minutes actual time, and I cannot Share on Facebook that quickly.  Since it is almost Labor Day weekend I was using white pants and remembered when I biked to hear Yevtushenko read poems at University of Puget Sound and got caught in the rain in white pants.  I caught cold.  I guess Pierce Transit will have to dry out a few busses, I hope this has not done serious damage and that the other riders have managed without getting ill.  Rain has always looked beautiful to me.