I try to keep my blog posts light and breezy, but I’m not feeling particularly breezy this morning. I’m watching the news from southern Arizona and worrying about the people who are dreading a second historic storm in less than two weeks. We’re in Seattle right now, so news out of Tucson is thin on the ground.

A good friend of mine, who lives in Florida, spends every autumn watching the storms form out in the Atlantic and then waiting to see exactly where the wicked wind and rain will come ashore. I’ve always told her I have no idea how she lives through those events without chewing off all her fingernails. Now my nails, complete with red shellac polish, are the ones at risk.

Most of my life I’ve been under the impression that hurricanes were in the Atlantic and typhoons were in the Pacific. I’m evidently wrong about that, because the weather people (who seem to get younger by the minute) are all referring to Odile and Norbert as “hurricanes.”

I have some personal experience with that kind of storm. In the fall of 1980 an end-of-campaign sales celebration was held at a resort in Mazatlan. I was newly divorced and staying in a hotel room on my own for the first time in a very long time. The rain and wind started shortly after I returned to my room. Within minutes, the huge glass panes in the sliding doors began bulging in and out. I had already taken out my contacts and didn’t have a spare pair of glasses to my name. At the time I had Lasik in 1994, my vision was 20/850 and 20/900. I have no idea what my vision situation was that dark and stormy night in Mazatlan, but once the power went off and the lights went out, I was blind and petrified. I finally pulled the bedding off the mattress and created a nest of sorts in the bathtub. There wasn’t much sleeping that night, and the next day I was overjoyed that our plane took off with no delays. I was ready to be OUT of Mazatlan, and I haven’t been back since.

For years the Busks of Bisbee delivered the Arizona Republic. First we dropped off bundles for the other paperboys in town, and then we delivered our own individual papers on two bicycle routes and on an auto route as well. The Arizona Republic has always been a part of my growing up years. The same must hold true for my younger brothers and sister as well. Last week, my brother sent me a screen shot of the front and back page of the Republic. Usually the front page has the headlines and the back page has a full page add. This time, both of them were one immense photo of the incredible flooding on I-17 with stalled cars stuck with water almost up to their roof tops. I’ve tried unsuccessfully to locate a link, but the photo was stunning. Obviously that spot on I-17 used to be a dry creek bed. The road-building engineers may have forgotten that bit of topographical information, but it turns out Mother Nature hasn’t.

That’s the thing about the desert. It’s easier to build roads where it’s flat and when there are mountains anywhere near by, it turns out the water goes where it’s flat, too.

Main Street in the “uptown” part of Bisbee Arizona, is built along that same faulty game-plan. It’s in the middle of Tombstone CANYON. And Brewery Gulch? Guess what? Gulch is another word for canyon on a somewhat smaller scale. There were devastating floods in town back in the old days–in the late 1800s and early 1900s. What locals call “the subway” was a drainage ditch that was constructed next to Main Street for flood control purposes. I’ve heard stories about one of those old time flash floods where the owner of the Lyric Theater came out and threw a lariat to rescue a drowning guy who had left a “home of ill repute” up Brewery Gulch and was about to be washed into the confluence of the water pouring out of both Brewery Gulch and the Subway.

Anyone who’s read my most recent Joanna book, Remains of Innocence, will probably recognize that scene where Joanna Brady and her deputies manage to lay hands on a fleeing killer. It’s right there where Brewery Gulch and Tombstone Canyon come together. In the book, there was no water in the Subway. Today there will be.

As a child I remember reveling in those summer “monsoon” storms that dumped an inch or two on a thirsty desert. I remember wading in the rushing water of the ditch that was “up across the road” from our house. I remember driving over the Divide to marvel at waterfalls pouring off the mountainside from Juniper Flats. And I remember a summer picnic when my younger brother, Jim, almost got washed away in the rushing waters of Mule Mountain Creek.

But those were all one or two inch rain storms. Today, with Norbert headed on a northeasterly course, they’re predicting five inches for Bisbee later this afternoon. FIVE!! I’m hoping that the subway will be able to handle the flow. If it doesn’t–if the water overflows and follows its natural course down the canyon and through town–the economic consequences will be devastating.

I saw the photos of the flooding in Mesa two weeks ago. With any kind of luck, this storm will veer away enough that the Phoenix metropolitan area will dodge the worst of it. I have no doubt that some of my fans lost homes and possessions in that previous disaster. And because we’ve had some flooding challenges of our own–albeit of the broken pipe variety–I know all too well the long term damage standing water wreaks along the way.

My sympathy goes out to those folks as well–to all of the ones affected–but right now, I’m sitting on my bone dry verandah in Seattle. I’m keeping my fingers crossed and praying for the folks in Bisbee, Arizona–my home town.