Rain, Rum, and Rainbow Hells
A Utah weather report from the ninth circle of the internet
It was spring 2023, and Utah faced something her crusty little heart wasn’t prepared for: spring runoff.
Now, let me explain something about Utah. Utah is dry. It’s so dry, when I smile, my lips file for workers’ comp. If I cry, it’s considered an irrigation event. My face sheds like a molting reptile anytime I think about emotions. We are essentially living on the surface of a stale tortilla chip.
Don’t blink. Your contacts will pop out.
So yeah, we don’t know what to do with excess water.
That spring, some of it got cocky and started flowing the wrong way down neighborhood streets, like it was a 1999 Honda Civic with a death wish. A street I once rode my bike on turned into a Class III rapid. That’s when I sent a video to my Dutch coworker and got hit with a dose of Euro-smugness.
“You guys have no idea how to deal with water,” he typed, sipping imaginary liters of rum, probably while sitting under sea level in a perfectly engineered dike system that hasn’t flooded since Rembrandt was alive.
He’s not wrong.
At the time, the flooding was visually epic. Sugarhouse Park turned into the Great Basin Sea. Entire neighborhoods became temporary marshlands. (Those were the neighborhoods with rich, old people, who didn’t know how to turn off their sprinkler systems because landscapers that didn’t speak English installed them during drought times of yore.) Somewhere in Kaysville, sidewalks just gave up and fell into the earth. The sandbags got names. People brought them dirty sodas.
Meanwhile, the Great Salt Lake stayed emptier than my faith in bipartisan governance.
Oh wait, that last part’s still true. We’re all still going to die from inhaling arsenic-laced playa dust. But hey, housing prices are up!
Anyway, my Dutch coworker, having solved flooding and socialism, pivoted our conversation to a place less controversial: North Korean infrastructure.
Apparently, according to a very real and not at all state propaganda documentary he watched, the Great Leader “solved all engineering problems in one go,” using “his divine gifts.”
Imagine that. A dictator solving climate resiliency issues with sheer vibes.
And somehow, our Slack DM detour took us straight to banned books, Bible discourse, and what he described as rainbow-colored hells, next to Dante’s ninth circle. Which, frankly, sounds fabulous.
🌀 But Let’s Talk About Hurricane Priscilla
Which brings me to 2025. Today, I saw a headline that made me think I’d hallucinated from too much chapstick inhalation:
“Flood watches ordered as remnants of Hurricane Priscilla head toward Utah.”
Utah. Hurricane remnants.
We are a landlocked, Book-of-Mormon-thumping, soda-fountain theocracy with enough powdered milk stockpiled to outlast the next Ice Age, and somehow we’re dealing with hurricane residue.
This, dear reader, is late-stage America. The part of the simulation where Florida’s weather makes a guest appearance in Utah, right before the Yellowstone caldera taps out like a moody influencer who got trolled.
It’s worth noting that we already have a Hurricane here. It’s a small town. “Hurrekin.” Very lovely. No actual hurricanes. Just lizards, retirees, and the occasional misplaced beach towel blown over from Sand Hollow Reservoir.
But no, this week we got a real hurricane’s leftovers, courtesy of the Pacific, which I assume is just tired of holding the line and decided Utah needed a trial run for sea-level awareness.
🌪️ Meanwhile, in MAGA land
Let’s be clear: the only reason Hurricane Priscilla even made it this far is because we banned weather science in January when it was revealed that clouds are, in fact, liberals.
We no longer believe in basic atmospheric physics because they haven’t been properly vetted by a podcast host in a pickup truck. Instead, we rely on The Truth as revealed to us by “American Weather Patriot”—a sentient bag of beef jerky with 450k followers on X (formerly Twitter, formerly a functioning platform).
The National Weather Service? They’re still around, but we don’t pay them anymore. Not this month. They run on unpaid patriots, passive-aggressive X posts, and sheer defiance. Bless them. Follow @NWSSaltLakeCity while you still can.
📡 An Ethical Technologist’s Forecast
All of this nonsense, believe it or not, brings me back to the point.
I’m trying to live more intentionally online. I want to use tech in ways that don’t make me want to launch myself into the path of a rogue tumbleweed.
This week, I lifted my feet off the algorithmic bottom. I avoided the comment section. I didn’t try to scroll my way into understanding, healing, or connection. Because sometimes, when the digital current gets rough, you have to float, not fight.
You might get fewer likes.
You might miss a meme.
But you’ll keep breathing.
