el crispito

I know. You were just waiting on the edge of your seats.

But it's a considerable thing that looms in the back of your head when you hear it: rainy season. We always know what that term means where we live and we're kind of used to what it means. Surely though, we've all heard stories, seen representations in movies or watched footage from obscure places that show weather that is extreme for what we're used to. I hear rainy season and I think of towns going through their annual season of inaccesability by motor vehicle because the road is washed out or constantly covered by too much running water. I hear that and think of rain measured in days or weeks, not minutes or hours.

Luckily, in Guadalajara, the rainy season isn't so bad. On occasion, you get amazingly heavy downpours, where the streets fill with standing water and you'll be soaked to the bone if you're caught outside. Most of the time that lasts for about 30 minutes, but then it can drizzle on for another four or five hours. Often, that's all you get: nothing but light drizzle for hours.

The streets can flood, and in fact, a couple of weeks ago, that stranded me at a restaurant. It started innocently enough, with normal, even rain that gave way to heavy rain. The streets started to fill with inches of running water and traffic was making a great splash passing through the intersection. Suddenly, the flow of water from the drainage grates reversed and started to gush back out and into the street. These geysers made the intersection a huge river through which traffic could not pass. We stayed at the restaurant, having dessert, then coffee, then a tequila on the house. Eventually it let up, officials came and opened up some other drainage and the water cleared out of the roads. Luckily, we had nowhere else important to be, because we'd not have been able to get there.

Most of the time, the rain happens at night, after 10 or 11. That isn't a steadfast rule though. Right now it's raining at 2 pm, and has been raining since 11 am. But often it will rain lightly for several hours at night, cooling things off the following day. It also helps to wet things down so we don't have so much dust in the air.

Our friends Larry and Joseph have warned us that if we're out somewhere and it starts raining (or if we're home, planning to go out and it starts raining), we should just stay put and wait it out. From what I've seen of the rainy season so far, that's good advice.