Risky business

Hurricane Ike visited us a couple days after it smashed Texas. We got rain, lots and lots of rain. The little river near us came up and overflowed its banks, flooding a soybean field a block from my house. The soybeans were only a few weeks away from harvest, so I am sure the farmer is quite upset. Farming is a risky business, something that people who are not farmers often do not recognize. However, the farmer does know that planting this field, which is available inside the city limits only because it is on the flood plain, is risky because the crop has been destroyed by water many times in the past. The constant flooding makes the soil very fertile, and the low level of the field results in a better-than-average crop in dry years.
We got five or six inches of rain from Ike, but people to our north and west got a lot more. The interstate that bypasses us (I-65) was closed, apparently because of flooding to the north. The Chicago area also got a lot more rain than we did. So the damage of Ike was not limited to the coastal areas.