Hurricane Dennis brings extra water to town

Although some Americans feared their fate at the hands of Hurricane Dennis, tropical storm rains have brought praises of thanks from some members of the IU community.\nWhile some national neighbors barricaded their houses or vacated their Gulf of Mexico neighborhoods from the fourth named hurricane of the summer season, some Hoosiers have danced through the tropical mist. Hurricane Dennis ravished communities beginning Sunday along the Gulf of Mexico, destroying condominiums, retirement villages, nudist colonies, vacations homes and many American dreams. \n"The rain is nice -- it's like coastal rain. I've been staying inside and working mostly. It seems like we haven't had much rain in Bloomington lately," said town resident Brad Carter, while waiting within IU Dunn's Woods for Nala, his husky-shepherd mix, to retrieve a thrown stick. \n"When it rains here you usually don't go outside because it is a torrential downpour for maybe 15 minutes. It rains so hard it's difficult to make it from the car into the house without getting wet. The rain this week is kind of misty -- it sometimes can spit for hours and hours."\nHurricane winds, torrential downpours and tornado-producing storm clouds formed a tropical storm that destroyed property, uprooted trees and flooded southern towns throughout neighborhoods in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and the Florida panhandle. Weaving northeast through Kentucky and Tennessee toward southern Illinois and Indiana, the storm that was once Hurricane Dennis has provided the campus and town a few drops of much needed rain during an otherwise dry July. \nSenior Alma Malagon, an East Chicago resident, said she has enjoyed Hurricane Dennis' northern spray because the Southern Indiana dirt is dry and most plants need the water. \n"I feel we needed rain for the plants. The hurricane rains haven't affected us as much," Malagon said. "It's still drizzling and the rain hasn't been as heavy."\nHundreds of miles away from the major damage and disrupted lives Hurricane Dennis provoked along the Gulf, graduate student Surag Dixit said the tropical storm has resulted in a "feeling of freshness" while he strolled through campus this week. He said he has enjoyed the Dennis' mist because the rainy season in India, his nation of origin, occurs in July through September. \n"Americans wait for sunny weather, but in India it is pretty dry and we have so much sun they wait for this kind of weather," Dixit said. "For me, I like the rain."\nHurricane Dennis' damage and destruction pales in comparison to Hurricane Ivan's more than $14 billion assault during the summer of 2004. Tropical Storm Emily, Mother Nature's next significant water threat, is already veering northwest and could become Hurricane Emily as it progresses through the Caribbean islands.\n"I'm glad we're getting water -- my yard is just dead. We don't get a lot of rain this time of year -- we usually only get a lot of sudden downpours," Bloomington resident Paul Spicer said Wednesday. "For the remnants of a hurricane, we haven't gotten that much rain. It's been off and on all day today -- it sprinkled this morning and then dried up." \nSpicer, a member of the IU Fire and Safety Risk Management Division, said his rain meter at home had registered about half-an-inch of water in Bloomington as of Tuesday.