This is mild. Those in the path of the flooding can get out alive, saving everything portable and valuable.

Think of Japan. 15 feet under, and five minutes warning if that. We may see 25 fatalities out of all this flooding, though with any luck it will be less. They lost 25 thousand.

What we’re seeing now is government doing things right. Blowing levees where they have to be blown so the river can flood a few farms rather than a few cities. Opening spillways here and there. A choreographed, computed minimization of the damage.

Short of living in the garden of Eden, this is our lot. This is as good as it gets. We’re going to get hammered from time to time.