12 July 2012
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Rainy Season Brings Early Flooding
Once again, rainy season has arrived in Thailand. The skies fill with ominous, dark clouds and once the wind picks up you know you have just a few minutes in which to seek shelter, otherwise you will be drenched by the downpour. While the rain usually follows a consistent schedule, arriving in the late afternoon and early evening, Thursday morning the rain rebeled, giving us two hours of heavy rain at dawn followed by another two hours of drizzle.
That was too much for the drainage system to handle and our end of the soi (small road) flooded quickly. Sidewalks were covered by a few inches and water in the road was deep enough to stall a few cars.
(Short video)
The security and maintenance staff at our condo erected a barrier of sandbags, trying to minimize the amount of water that flowed into the first level of the car park.
Despite their efforts, the entire ground floor was wet.The basement level was flooded a few inches deep as the sump pump struggled to clear the water. The elevators were out of service once the mechanical rooms were breached by the water.
While most of the city recovered pretty quickly from the heavy rains, the morning commute was a mess and by late afternoon, several areas still had standing water. Just wait until September and October, the months when the rain is generally the heaviest!
Comments (19)
If that happens in Singapore, an international panel is installed. Outcome unknown, but the almighty government showed “Action”, thus the name PAP.
There are a few streets downtown the flood when there are heavy rains. But it’s nothing like this though. I have this odd feeling after seeing the first picture. I just want to be anywhere but here right now. I can’t explain it.
Wow, so easy to get flooded in your soi, good that you guys live up stairs!
We had some flooding when Debby was making her way through the Gulf. And then followed by a few more days of rain. I had nothing to compare to your flooding. This is our rainy season but I hate to see your water levels when your rainy season arrived. Good luck and hang tough!
Flooding again! What a pain it must be to deal with it two years in a row now. Yes it is a good thing you do not live on the ground floor. Hope everything will drain away soon.
dang, that flooding is nutz! great vid though.
Obviously this is becoming a worldwide problem. Here where I live in Miami, the rainy season is upon as well and for the past week we have been getting drenched with water. The usual pattern is rain in late afternoon which allows us to do our things early and get home before the water. But, this season it has been raining heavy in the morning and then it drizzles all afternoon.
Definitely been raining lately. The soi and stalls get all wet. It really sucks because I love swimming and snorkeling in the seas.
No long term urban projects to remedy that?
I love the look of the sky in the first picture. So typical of Monsoon. Sorry you had this flooding though Chris. What a mess to have the elevators shut down and be marooned, especially for folks who cannot adjust to taking steps up or go down. It rained a little here today. I mean A LITTLE. Wish we could have a couple of deluges of rain. The ground is so dry and the farmers are hurting so bad.
aww yes the great food pictures making me hungry although my sister does make the mussel salad but uses clams unstead of muscles and puts mandarin oranges and raspberrys in it. the upper desert is flooded here also as we are having an unusally early and violent monsoon season. we get storms out of arizona from the gulf of mexico they travel northwest and usually just get a little rain over at the border by blythe and bullhead city but this year we had a violent squall right here with half inch rain and high winds, up in the high desert, victorville area, they had flash floods that were pretty scary.
Sorry to hear about the flooding. I have to say that now that we have been there to visit the pictures make more sense. I saw a picture of some of our security buddies. Tell the, hi for us.
@ZSA_MD - Thanks for the recommendation, Dr. Z. Would be happyto ship some of our extra rain to Quincy!
@angel_vow - Thanks for the recommendation, too. Yes, the monsoon messes up visibility, doesn’t it? I can never remember the pattern – it is the Andaman that is low visibility right now, right?
@oldpartner - I’ll let them know you said hello. Ha ha…
@grannykaren - Yes, I’ve read that the high deserts in the Southwest get monsoon rains, too. It is the intensity of the rains that amaze me.
@Inciteful - A few years back I chatted with a British hydrologist who lived and worked here and his opinion was that, given the fact that Bangkok is low-lying (think New Orleans), their water drainage system is remarkably effective. The problem for our street is that there’s about 300 feet of it that is lower than elsewhere, so we get the deepest water and it takes the longest to drain.
@catstemplar2 - That sounds similar to our normal pattern of rain: late afternoon showers for which you can plan. The morning rain that flooded our soi was less common.
@AzrihaEatsWorld - Glad you enjoyed it.
@awoolham - In this case, it was really limited flooding, a few hours in just a few areas. Not widespread and long-lasting like last year. Let’s hope that doesn’t make a return visit!
@Fatcat723 - Oh, that’s right, you guys had a bit storm recently, didn’t you?
@beowulf222 - I’d imagine a bit more gets done on the Singaporean panels than on the Thai ones!
@CurryPuffy - The layout of the building places the first floor of residences almost a full story above ground level, so the risk of flooding in the units is quite low. Just the inconvenience of being stranded.
wow, that’s a lot of water! stay dry!
@christao408 – True, and actual report gets written for the drawer.
this used to be a typical problem we have here in the city of jakarta, during rain seasons. luckily, we haven’t had it since 2007, thanks to the effort of the governor in the past few years to eradicate the problem. so how long can we keep the flood away from the city? who knows. we are currently having many constructions around the city due to government’s effort to introduce the monorail system. and the rain season is coming this november/december. i’m keeping my fingers crossed.
O boy that is messy
@kunhuo42 - Thanks… trying. Need to buy galoshes next time I’m in the US.
@yang1815 - Yeah…
@rudyhou - Supposedly our local gov’t is also doing a lot of infrastructure work to reduce flooding, but I have a sneaking suspicion that little of it is actually happening.
@christao408 - i’m pretty sure you’re not the only one