Day Five of Forty Days of Rain

According to Genesis 7:4, Yahweh says to Noah in 2348 BC or almost four thousand years ago, "For in seven days I will send rain on the earth forty days and forty nights, and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground.”

Throughout early September 2016, the Eastern Seaboard had been torched by a heat wave. Day after day of 90-plus temperatures. I wanted to go to the beach, but it was too hot for a stroll across the Rockaways’ hot sands.

A week later, the weather broke, and the temperature dropped into the 70s, then the 60s. A week later, another tropical storm dumped rain for three days on New York. . As much as two inches in one twelve-hour period.

The storm flooded the streets of New York, not Fort Greene, although on my block-long walk back to 387, I noticed that water spewing from the storm drains. Fast-moving streams ran swiftly downhill. Fort Greene was high ground. Not dry, but high.

This drainage system had been built in 1892 by hard-working emigrants wanting an honest day's pay for an honest day's work. Not easy to find that work these days. Like Eternal Rome’s aqueducts, their work has stood many tests of time.

The next day, the rain stopped. Clear skies. A pleasant temperature. I'm heading down to the street.

I would take a trip to the Rockaways, but the Mayor has warned the city's citizens to stay home, and as much as I want to be free, sometimes it's best not to do anything.

Tomorrow is meant to be even better.

So this Flood was short by thirty-five days. Maybe Next time.

October 7, 2023

I stand corrected.

Clinton Hill lays on the slope below Fort Greene Park. The neighbor hood was saved from the intense flooding in the riverside neighborhoods. The sewers magnificent as they are, had not been constructed with the Global Extinction rains in mind. Instagram had featured a VDO of a New Yorker waddling waist-deep to catch a train. What the fuck are you thinking? Stay home.

ps September 27, 2026 The nor’easter hit the coast hard. I’m crashing on Bleecker Street in the Village. The storm will pass by noon. I ain’t going anywhere until it's over.