Texas' "extreme" drought is over

[My Alter Ego]

This is kind of neat. It's aerial footage of the Trinity River in Dallas shot by a drone. The Trinity is normally a narrow channel that runs along the trees you see in the video, surrounded by a grassy areas on both sides. There are earthen levees to contain floodwaters.



This weekend the river was at the 40-ft flood stage and people came out to see it. The bridge with the people on it was an old roadway that was converted to a pedestrian bridge when they built the way-overpriced signature bridge next to it. There are plans to spend a billion dollars to convert the area around the river below into a major park

The plans include a controversial toll road inside the levee on the side closest to downtown Dallas. It's controversial because people voted for the park only to learn about the road afterwords, and they don't want an expressway near the park.

In other weather-related news, Houston was hit hard yesterday. They had 11 inches of rain overnight, which caused major flooding.

Eleven inches overnight? Wow! No wonder there is major flooding!

Oh, and the toll road that appeared after a vote? Well, maybe you have something on Seattle there (and probably other major cities -- and small towns), but Seattle has two stadiums (baseball and football) that its citizens voted down, but TPTB managed to push through anyway. Given the football team's success in the last couple years, I suspect much of the anger/resentment/controversy has subsided, but there is still the fact that the voters' decision ultimately meant nothing.