Blackwater River to Crest Today

Now here's a little news story I never saw this weekend in Delaware:

Schools are closed in Isle of Wight County today, where the rain-swollen Blackwater River has been flooding homes and roads.

The river kept a section of U-S Route 460 between Windsor and Zuni impassable yesterday after the region got up to ten inches of rain on Friday and Saturday. The road is expected to be closed there again today.

Numerous secondary roads also were closed in Smithfield and Suffolk and the counties of James City, Southampton, Surry and Sussex.

The Associated Press
WFLS News
Date published: 10/9/2006

Here is our route from The Chesapeake Bay Tunnel Bridge toward home sweet home:



That black line coming in from the top right is the bridge, and then we work our way through the tangle of Hampton Roads (the origin and purpose of that name for that area has been on my "look this up" list since we moved here over a year ago), eventually out onto 13/58/460, split to 58/460, and finally onto 460 itself. Those of you with a magnifying glass may be able to see from this map that our route takes us right through Zuni and Windsor.

I saw one flashing sign on my way home. The first half of the message was:

RTE 460 CLOSED BTWN ZUNI AND IVOR

The second half of the message was:

USE ALT ROUTES.

Not exactly a wealth of information. I suppose a normal person would have pulled over into a gas station, opened a map, plotted an alternate route, and found her way home. Unfortunately, I am not normal. My first thought was, "That sign may have been flashing there for days. I'm going to go see if 460 is really closed." When I merged onto 460, I thought I might be right, since there was nothing at the exit indicating that a road closure was right down the road. Then I thought, "Maybe they had some sort of Columbus Day parade and now the road is reopened."

I know, I'm an idiot. I was desperate to get home the quickest way, and that is why I convinced myself that somehow the road would magically reopen. But I would like to point out that if the flashing information sign had said that the road was flooded, I probably would have believed it. They had that information, why couldn't they just provide it to me? I used to be a scientist dagnabbit. I have a compulsive need to investigate.

Anyway, when we got to route 258 in Windsor, we were instructed by another sign to go south to route 58, but we were still not provided with any information about why the road was closed. I eventually took 58W to 95N and back home, and both of those roads are smooth and speedy, so I can't really complain about the actual driving part. However, here are some of the consequences:

Aislinn had to do her homework on her lap by dome light. The paragraph that she was supposed to write about this week's story did not get done. Her teacher will probably wonder why I requested and yet ignored her homework assignments for today.

All three kiddies had to have another meal at Old McDonalds because starvation hit when we were still an hour out (but would have been home if not for the detour).

I had to listen to the High School Musical soundtrack, both in the CD player and live in the backseat more times than I care to remember (and I sit here with a glass of wine, attempting to dull the pain).

The kiddies were shoved into bed with a cursory teeth brushing and no books so that no bodily harm would come to any of us.

With a day of travelling and an hour delay at bedtime, tomorrow does not look like an easy morning.

You may wonder where I found a map with all of those helpful lines pointing our way home. It actually came from this map:


FEMA, we may have a problem.