indi.ca

Rain in Colombo, circa 2012.

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Sorry for the long radio silence. I took a bit of a long weekend and my main computer melted down. Working on an iPad’s not much fun. The main thing about this long weekend was that it rained, and rained and rained and rained. And now that rains have stopped here, we see that a hurricane has struck New York, flooding subways causing insane amounts of damage. Bit of a deluge.

Rain is a funny thing. Most Sri Lankans aren’t farmers anymore, but we still hope for rain in that it creates electricity for us. The current deluge has meant that Sri Lanka can generate about 30% of its power from cheaper hydropower rather than depending on thermal (ie, burning embargoed Iranian crude).

At the same time, however, rain floods Colombo’s overburdened drainage system, clogging traffic, breaking cars and causing general havoc. Outstation, on the east coast especially, they got the real burden of it, with seas too rough to fish in and lashing winds. Thankfully, the looming cyclone seems to have headed towards India and passed us by.

New York and the east coast of America were not so lucky. It looks tsunami-esque, scenes of submerged cars and flooded streets, but thankfully people had enough warning to evacuate. Still looks like serious damage affecting millions of people.

These events, of course, are unconnected, expect that increasing global warming does make weather more unpredictable and dangerous, and due to factors we can control. So we should probably control those. Rain is a wonderful thing, but it rarely comes according to our schedules or sense of moderation. As they say, when it rains it pours.