Weeknotes #347

We received our first Level 4 flood warning on Tuesday evening at around 9.30 pm. Level 4 is the level at which evacuation is recommended. This is the first warning we’ve had since moving into the house and it was certainly unnerving. I like the area where we live but it does come with a greater flooding risk than any of the previous places we’ve been in since coming to Tokyo. Apparently, evacuation in a flood situation can mean retreat to the upper levels of a building if the level of inundation expected is minor. So, given that Nerima’s official hazard map shows our street as having up to 50 cm of flooding, we decided not to leave the house and instead bring the kids upstairs. A real time-ish measure of the river’s water level indicated the rate had already started to ease at the time the Level 4 announcement was made and, sure enough, over the next two hours the waters fell back down and it all ended without any flooding at all. Apple’s annual iPhone event was streamed in the early…