Rainbows over Boston, flash flooding in Waltham

We Boston-area folk were truly spoiled last week. Day after day we had stunningly clear and temperate weather. It was a joy for me to hop on my bike every evening after work and go for a long tour from Arlington through Somerville and Cambridge, and then down to the Charles river in a big loop from Memorial Drive to the Esplanade on the Boston side. Blue skies ahead! (Yes, that was a shoutout to the Doves.)

(If you notice the nasty purple fringing in the following photos, that’s because they were all taken on the dinky camera of my cellphone, not with my proper digital camera.)

This past Saturday was the first hint that our lucky weather streak was coming to an end. We had a few spats of thunder and pelting rain, but nothing serious at all. I even got to see a lovely rainbow over the Back Bay as the late-afternoon sun poked through the clouds:

Today, Monday, we had thunder and lightning intermittently throughout the day. Made for kind of a dreary start of the week, but the rain itself wasn’t anything serious. Or so I thought.

As I started my evening commute home up Lexington Street in Waltham, I noticed there was a lot more traffic than usual. It seemed many cars were pulling U-turns in the middle of the street. As I continued on, I saw a massive puddle ahead that inundated cars well above their headlights at their deepest points. Not wanting to flood my dinky Corolla’s engine, I also pulled a U-turn and tried an alternate route.

Blocked there, too, by the same problem. Massive flash flooding from what was, to me, not a large amount of rain at all. By the third time I ran into a puddle-roadblock, the cops had gotten involved, directing cars through any available parking lots or backways to try another route. This was the Car-Engulfing Puddle O’ Doom they were directing us to avoid:

The puddle was higher than this truck’s headlights at its deepest. I’m amazed that it managed to ford that expanse of water without stalling its engine. I can tell you the cops (at right) weren’t too happy about this guy taking his chances.

Here’s a better view of the huge puddle and the cars trapped behind it, dumbfounded as to how else they can get home:

A little closer in on the fire hydrant, you can see that the water has come up over the street, over the sidewalk and halfway up the hydrant on the curb. And that’s not the deepest part of water by any means:

For anyone curious, this stretch of Lexington Street was right in front of the strip mall with the Shaws and GameStop in it (the only reasons I’m ever at this strip mall, really). Was this water really all just from backed-up drainage? As far as I could tell these roads were no where near any overflowing body of water like a creek or river. I remember in spring 2006 the Merrimack Valley had some serious issues with the river spilling over its banks, but that was after several days (if not weeks) of constant rain combined with a sudden thaw, wasn’t it?

All this talking of street flooding puts into perspective how much this really is the most minor inconvenience on the grand scale of things. My thoughts are with the strong people in the Midwest whose lives have been so disrupted by the massive floods. I can’t even begin to imagine the difficulties they are facing right now.