The hemisphere opened its portals and the rainfall has been drenching our area all summer. If Mother Nature was a real lady, I’d expect she was hitting the bottle too many times (and I don’t mean iced tea or Dr Pepper), but a more potent drink. She’s completely out of her weather range. What’s with the steady rainfall all summer? What a lousy season! You can’t even plan a barbecue cookout or family picnic.

Remember when we were kids, we’d shout “rain, rain, go away … come back another day!” A tremendous amount of flooding on the East Coast, while California had all those horrific fires burning up the state. Why doesn’t it get some of our rainfall that’s battering the Eastern Seaboard? Half the state is totally burned to ashes, while a thousand or more homes have gone up in smoke. One man’s flooding is another man’s wildfire. Some of the fires are at the wicked hands of arsonists or a pyromaniac, who thrills to watching gigantic blazes!

We’re fortunate here in Pennsylvania. Our picturesque state doesn’t burn up with raging fires. Why California has umpteen forest fires is a baffling mystery, and no one seems to know the answer. Of course, the state barely gets any rainfall and the mountains are bone dry year-round.

The horrendous flooding here in our area reminds one of Tamaqua’s great flood of 1955. Even the Atlas workers couldn’t get home in their autos. People had to detour to other areas to reach home, the flooding was so powerful. The entire Tamaqua area was in deep floodwaters.

Pray for Pennsylvania and California residents as they need all the prayers from around the country. It’s devastating and a humongous loss for those poor souls not having a home or a bed to sleep in. Mother Nature sucks; she doesn’t play fair. Life sometimes doesn’t always deal a full deck. God bless America, and especially those homeless California residents.

Earle E. Stahler

West Penn Township