Glub and honk (and occasional sirens)

Rte. 119 is still underwater and closed on the Groton-Pepperell line (the linked map shows you exactly the spot, although not the flooding), so traffic is still being detoured through Pepperell. That means I’m staying home for the second day in a row rather than fight the traffic on Main Street, which is annoying. (For everyone not familiar with this area, Pepperell is nowhere near any major highway in any direction. Two-lane Rte 119 runs northwest from the junction of Rte 2 and I-495 up into New Hampshire and is the major commuter route for people who live out here and work in the Boston suburbs. It’s heavily traveled, to the point that Groton Center, whose Main Street is 119, is a parking lot during commuter hours daily. Now all that is being diverted through Pepperell.)

There’s a current photo on the Pepperell town website showing the Wilkens (or “Gary’s” on the map) farm stand and florist, which is right on Rte 119 by the river, with its parking lot and building submerged. The building is just a sort of shed, so you can be confident there’s just as much water inside. I feel bad for them because they do have a number of big commercial coolers for flowers and food.

I edited the video I took on Tuesday down at the bridge and put it on YouTube. This was a great project because it was my first chance to seriously tackle Sony Vegas Movie Studio since I took the video editing class, and now I’ve got it down. I didn’t take a lot of time with this, but here’s our historic flood. Watch all the way to the end if you want to see the “punchline” I spotted.

It’s been very nice weather, at least. But the water is going down a lot more slowly than in previous spring floods I remember, probably because the ground was already so saturated and everything was so full from all the precipitation and snow melt we’d had all winter.