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| Drainage Basins |
 Title text: After a pail of water was thrown on the Wicked Witch of the West outside Salt Lake City, Utah's Great Salt Lake was measured to be 7 parts per trillion witch by volume. |
Explanation
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This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a LIQUID 90s KID. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. |
Alex Mack was the main character in the Nickelodeon show The Secret World of Alex Mack [1] who developed superpowers after being drenched by an experimental substance. One of these is the ability to turn into a puddle of liquid.
A drainage basin is an area of land where all flowing water converges to one or more outlets to the same body of water. A depiction of drainage basins is a watershed map, which for the United States is shown in the comic.
When Randall sees a map of the US's major drainage basins, he thinks of Alex turning into liquid and flowing as part of the basin she happens to be in at the time.
The title text refers to the Wicked Witch of the West, a character from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. When a bucket of water is thrown on her, she dissolves into a puddle. If this happens in the Great Basin, she'll flow into Utah's Great Salt Lake. If its dissolved particles are measured, a tiny fraction will be witch. Seven trillionths of its 18.93 cubic km volume is about 130 liters, which is approximately twice the volume of a typical human being. Perhaps some generous rounding, evaporation of the lake, or the Wicked Witch of the East (who predeceased her sister, after Dorothy's house landed on her -- Dorothy is from Kansas, which is not in the Great Basin, but perhaps Oz is) are involved.
Transcript
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This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks. |
- US Drainage Basins [Crossed Out]
- Where Alex Mack Will End Up [Below, in red]
- [Map of the United States, with the following drainage basins labeled:]
- Pacific Ocean
- Great Basin
- Arctic Ocean
- Various Basins
- Hudson Bay
- Gulf of Mexico
- Atlantic Ocean
- [Caption below the panel:]
- How I still think of these maps, deep down
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