When It Rains...

As spring officially clocked in last week, complaints about the unusual weather were on the rise--and so were water tables across much of the Midwest and Southeast. Floods struck Tennessee and Mississippi and several regions around the Great Lakes. Swelled by abnormal winter rains and lashed by strong winds, the waters of Lake Erie are three inches above the previous record set in the flood-disaster year of 1952. Michigan State authorities have already computed the damage of an imminent deluge: $112 million. It has been so mild in Wisconsin that a recent snowmobile championship race in Eagle Rock had to be run on sawdust. In New York City minimal snowfall meant a budgetary windfall: millions of dollars allocated for snow removal were never spent. Meanwhile, Lander, Wyo., this winter froze solid at an average of 10.6DEG below its norm.

But abnormal is, in fact, normal when it comes to weather. What was unusual was the occasional attempt to do something about it. In the San Francisco area, where rainfall has been twice as heavy as usual and houses have started to slide down green hillsides, the Cupertino city council passed a resolution: "Without intending to interfere in the overall plan of things as envisioned by the Deity, the city council of Cupertino does hereby proclaim that there shall be no more rainfall within the city limits during the remainder of March 1973." Man proposes, God disposes: a few days later it rained.

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