New Jersey is a fairly watery state. On a normal day, it’s filled with rivers, lakes, and swamps. When it rains, well, those bodies of water reclaim their territories from men.
Newark, the shitty town where I work, gets flooded easily. You’d expect that of a port city, I suppose, but based on people’s gossip, it seems like the entire state is under water. Coworkers stayed home for the day, switched to train, or specifically picked SUVs for the commute – made me feel rather naive and clueless about the hazards.
From the Turnpike to my office, I drove through a swamp and two rivers this morning. There were only one each yesterday, and the hazard seemed cumulative as the storm went on all week.
The swamp was on the ramp off the Turnpike, under the overhead pass. On a sunny day, it’s an unpleasant stretch to drive on because of the unevenly cracked pavement and the sewerage smell. When there’s even a few drops of rain, this very section of the ramp accumulates water, and it’s always dark opaque like when your toilet needs Drano.
The Jungle Cruise at Disney World doesn’t get any more exciting than this. So glad I don’t drive a Lamborghini.
A quarter mile down, there was a river orthogonal to the 4-lane, 1-way road. Given the curvature on the pavement, everyone squeezed to drive down the middle where the water was only 1-2 inches shallow. I felt good about the water splashes because it’d partially wash away the sewerage water on my car. At least this river was somewhat clear. A slight hydro-plant was part of the package.
The resistence driving in water felt quite funny.
A block down, an SUV was stalled in the middle of the road. Reason unknown. Beyond that, traffic merged again to cross a newly emerged and highly substantial river.
“Yay, another underbody car wash”
Audi soaking stalled in this river. Uh… should I be concerned? (I was)
BLINDED!
Some jerk decided that it’s okay to ram through the deep part of water in his big ass vehicle, with a lead foot on the gas. The splash I saw in my peripheral vision was shocking like an action scene from Jaws.
I wonder how heavy a car has to be to safely splash up this much water without losing control. Media reported a Grand Cherokee hydroplanted killing four people yesterday in North Carolina, so I doubt this jerk was beating traffic with much traction.
Coworker told me that the water level had somewhat reduced by the time I arrived. It was supposedly so high that a Toyota Sequoia was stalled on the same road.
They say it’ll keep raining for another week 😮