I live near the Shawsheen river, maybe about 300 yards away, but I am, luckily, above the high-water mark for flooding. I cross bridges over the river all the time, and, yes, I have noticed that since yesterday's torrential and continuous downpours, the river is pretty high. I follow the river to the next town over, and it's high there, too, but not yet high enough to cause traffic concerns.
I head one more town over and check out another river, the Ipswich River, and I follow it off and on for a few miles in my car. It is high; maybe unreasonably high in places. Still, it has not covered any roads -- inched dangerously close and infringed on wooded lowlands, but nothing catastrophic.
The swamps near my house are also high, but they haven't spilled into the roadway, either. Of course, the swamp nearest to my house is in protected land, so no one has filled it in nor tried to build on it. It just is. Thank goodness, because the little wetland area is home to turkeys and deer and hawks and all kinds of cool wildlife not normally comfortable so near to the center of town and activity.
By the time I get home from my exploring, it is clear that the flooded street so close and yet so far from my own home is all due to piss-poor building permits and a lax (if not corrupt, at the time) town building department. The flooded swamp-turned-exclusive-neighborhood backs up to protected wetlands in the city of Lawrence. That's right: LAWRENCE. Yes, even the Drug-Capital of the Eastern Seaboard knows enough NOT to build in the fucking swamps.
Anyway, thank you, bad weather for giving me an entertaining way to pass time today. Although it's still windy, cold, and raw out there, the sun is shining, and I suspect that Spring may well be right around the next bend in the very high but not yet flooding river.
