"FINALLY, some rain!" said a Sun.Star Cebu headline. It's now floods in storms following cracked earth in droughts. Or too much heat in one hot season, then too much water in the rainy one.
That’s the old language of a climate change, say weather watchers. It used to be rainy season on its way in after the summer heat. Now the term is “La Niña” swinging in and “El Niño” slipping out in a natural climate variant.
In our life, we have experiences of typhoons and droughts in the year.
In normal dry air are water droplets. When they sort of compress, the result is what we call clouds. When the droplets are big enough, they stick together and form bigger drops then, pulled by gravity, plunge into the air down to earth as rain. When rain is heavy, rivers rise in some areas of the earth in seasonal monsoons.
Our experience with nature’s water came in summer trips to the coastal towns during vacation leaves, part of my memory of water in nature we call rain.
And yes, not just adults but children love rain.
When I was a grader, I used to jump in full expectation of fun when there was a typhoon somewhere, as announced in the radio, “No classes!” Then we kids would stay in Grandma’s room to play. It would have been more fun to go out under the rain and we never stopped suggesting this even as she firmly stuck to her idea of fun for us. The woman didn’t want us to get out of the room. From the window half-closed, we children would watch the neighborhood kids down there fully wet, playing with water in the gutter, laughing, singing. They moved in joy with water up to their legs.
In college, my life was full of water up to my feet during rainy seasons which is our picture of the beginning of a flood. But the water in the air was not any more nor any less when it was a normal season change in my college days.
At the University of Santo Tomas in Sampaloc, the streets in all sides of the UST buildings (starting with the old main building) get flooded not only during storms but in normal rainy days. With my classmates and many others, I braved the flood.
In the rainy season, rain dropped without warning. I’d leave my rented room on Taft Ave. on a light morning hour for that jeepney ride to school. I reached UST’s back entrance and walked down from the vehicle into the flood. On our way home, we classmates walked with our feet deep in the water right in the middle of the flooded road to avoid falling into the canal. I was careful not to take the wrong step. There were other students walking in the middle of the street where vehicles also slowly passed by.
Up to this time, the UST flooding in the areas of the heritage university buildings occurs. It’s said that hundreds of students, as reported, are sometimes forced to stay in the buildings for the night until the water subsides.
The government has proposed to form a catchments area, like a “retarding basin” to catch the water rush and let it flow into the river. But the UST priests are afraid the historical heritage buildings will be affected badly.
Rain, normal and familiar, is part of our life. Yes, rain is here.
(ecuizon@gmail.com)