Five Reasons Why We're Going to Miss The Drought

Barry Sigman

The grass is always greener, metaphorically speaking.

​According to the weather people, Texas's big, ugly drought should be coming to an end today. Well... not necessarily today, but soon. Supposedly, the worst is over, La Niña is leaving us the hell alone for a while and we'll start seeing some rain again.

Your lawns are dying and your water is being rationed. You can't just casually flick your cigarettes away anymore, and making sure they're thoroughly smashed beneath your foot makes you look way less cool. We know, the drought is rough. But Houston is not a city of balance; it's either going to be way too little rain, or way too much. A week or two of nothing but rain, and we'll be fondly remembering back to the days when there wasn't a cloud in the sky.

Here, then, are the things we're going to miss most about the drought if and when it finally comes to an end.

5. No mosquitos
Well, okay, not *no* mosquitos, per se, but there have definitely been significantly fewer of them this season, and it's been nice. Dusk is usually the best time of day in the summer, and it's never fun to have it ruined by swarms of the rotten little bloodsuckers. The few that have survived do seem all kinds of pissed off, though.

Time to break these out again.

​4. No umbrellas
Toting an umbrella around is a pain in the ass. Odds are if it doesn't rain, you're going to leave it somewhere and have to buy a new one, and then the cycle of annoyance starts all over again. And even if you're great at keeping up with them, not everywhere has places that are good for hanging up sopping wet umbrellas, so you just kind of have to flop them down on the floor by your feet. No thanks.

3. No humidity
Again, maybe we should say *less* humidity, but still, compared to that Houston post-shower steam haze where the moisture actually seems to be springing from the air itself, the traces of humidity we've experienced over the past few months have been as unto nothing.

2. No rain traffic
The drivers in the Houston area are erratic at best, but as soon as it starts to rain, they seem to completely take leave of their senses. Some slow to a dangerous crawl, while some speed just as dangerously by, pretending that the conditions haven't changed at all. Hey, it's drizzling! This is a fantastic excuse for me to slow to 20 mph on the freeway so that the bro-douche doing 80 in the Land Rover behind me can hydroplane right into me with much greater ease. Because I am a Houston driver and an asshole.

1. No flash floods
This could have gone under "rain traffic," but we felt it deserved its own section. Have you ever been one of those unlucky enough to be on the road when a pounding rain hits the already-waterlogged Houston streets? When it's been raining for eight days straight and you really don't want to go out, but if you don't pick up some laundry detergent and start doing the wash, your boss is going to transfer you to Anchorage?

So you pick a break in the storm, but before you can even get done paying for your supplies, the deluge has started again. Your car slowly crawls along streets whose gutters are getting deeper and deeper and before you know it, the street is gone. Only water lies ahead. How deep? Will you be able to reach home and safety... or are you about to be minus one infuriatingly non-buoyant 2002 Dodge Stratus? Choose wisely, you poor bastard, and daydream of a time when the earth around you was parched with thirst and the roads were clear as a bell.