On Saturday I was riding in the howling wind but otherwise was having a good time. The previous night I had predicted howling wind from the remnants of Noel plus clouds and a touch of drizzle along with tides about 2 to 2.5 feet above normal. At those levels the low spots in the neighborhood where I planned on going should have been dry or had a couple of inches of water at most across the road. When I got to the first low spot a few blocks from the oceanfront there was a 3 inch deep stream where there should have been a road. I've ridden through that neighborhood before during storms and had never seen that particular road flood. I began to wonder if maybe the water levels weren't higher than I had anticipated.

A few blocks later another stream appeared and I decided to again go through it figuring it was probably about the same depth. As it turns out it was deeper and soon I was up to my calves in cold saltwater. Right then a car came by and without slowing down purposely went through the apparent lake creating a huge wave over my entire body. Obviously I wasn't happy (that's an understatement !) but I didn't react at all and kept riding. 2 blocks later I see an even bigger lake across the road and I see the car stuck smack dab in the middle flooded out. As the saying goes, "what comes around, goes around".

After a detour around that lake I knew I was running late for meeting people so I put the After coming across another river in place of a road I had to turn around again and was soon treated to a third strange occurance.

A car ahead of me also had to detour and I figured I would follow it out of the neighborhood since I had never been in that section before. All of a sudden out of nowhere a fox bounds across the road right in front of me almost knocking me over. Luckily I missed it and was able to get to where I was supposed to be only about 5 min late and as it turned out the people I was meeting were also running late so I didn't miss out at all.

The rest of the ride was interesting in that everytime we came to an open area near the water the wind would almost knock us off our bikes. Luckily we all made it safe and sound and non the worse for wear.

Once I got home I immediately went online to check the water levels and was amazed to find that all the tidal gauges were showing exactly what I had been predicting, or even a few inches below the forecast. I've seen that other times as well with flooding events. Almost every time we get flooding I hear from one or two isolated spots where the exact combination of wind and tides combines to give water levels that appear to be a little bit above the forecast despite every available gauge saying that things worked out exactly right. I think this time that happened in areas of northern Va. Beach