The shower on Thursday was reported the worst in 70 years history in Shanghai, and I thought that was it for this year. But the shower today is worse, and I don’t know if it’s recorded in Shanghai history at all. Since I did not have plans today, I relaxed at home and stared outside the windows occasionally to see if the rain ever stopped. Up till now, the roads outside have been turned into rivers with cars “floating” on and the rain is just getting stronger as it gets dark after 6pm. I don’t want to ride a boat to work tomorrow morning…Lots of people say the drainage system in Shanghai sucks, but if this kind of rain happens in any cities in China or in the world, I don’t think they could act any better. Let’s say the weather is to blame, or frankly speaking, we, human beings, are to blame, as we are burning coals and oil and producing carbon dioxide and other by-products at the same time, disturbing our earth. The rain is abnormal and it’s crazy. I remember last year I was caught in a rain when I was off work back home, but as far as I can remember the heavy shower is more frequent and more damaging this year.
 | |
 | |
| Rain on Thursday | |
 | |
| Rain Stopped at Sunset, but Not Today |
Let’s see what tomorrow might be…
The past couple of days have been soggy at best, at least today looks like we can dry out. The rain is bad, but it does keep temperatures below 28, electricity use was most likely down due to that and it happening over a weekend. The humidity is pretty bad too but better then temps in the 30's! I have seen worse flooding in parts of Shanghai but as in most cities storm drainage and sewers are an afterthought to designers. Shanghai is better then some I have seen, parts of it anyway. The area I live in now is much better then the one I just moved from, I have some pictures from last year that look much worse! Some cities in the US are just as bad, Milwaukee the worst, why? They have a combined sweage system, when it rains in the spring and summer the system backs up and they have to dump raw untreated or partially treated sewage into Lake Michigan, one of the Great Lakes and water supply for the Mid-west! This year alone they have dumped 5 billion gallons of sewage into the fresh water lake! At least in China I know to drink bottled water. Shanghai is a huge city, second largest in China, so it is constantly being upgraded. I think the city developers are doing their best to keep up. As for the rain, just like seasons we have bad years and good years. In Detroit I remember the blizard of 1977, one of the worst to hit that city, since then only 3 or 4 blizards have come close. The same goes for rain, 2 years ago it was pretty dry here until a typhoon came. We do need to help clean the air but I believe the weather has broader cycles, like El Nino and La Nina that we are only just now beginning to understand.
ReplyDelete