Monday, January 23, 2017

Raining Cats and Dogs

Southern California, especially LA County, is known for its little rain.  In fact, we've been in a serious drought due to record lows in snow pack/rainfall over the last several years.  Last year's El Nino was supposed to bring us some inches, but in the end as per the more recent norm, that weather pattern fizzled out, leaving us with another year of hot dry weather and a very serious concern over lack of water.  This year, La Nina has been predicted.  La Nina is a wet weather pattern like El Nino, but with colder ocean temps/weather instead of warmer.  These predictions have fallen on deaf ears over the the last few years due to their non-existence.
However, this year La Nina HAS arrived.  We've had more rain/snow so far this winter than we've had in the last 6 winters combined.  It is a GOOD thing, but I'll tell you, it is such a nuisance.  The thing about the rain here is that when it rains, it pours...and pours and pours and pours, with very little let up for days on end.

I tried to get the gist of it on the video.  It is just pouring, but there are only a few seconds where the lighting shows it off.  Poor Rigby went out to take care of business while I took this and she was just about to go when that wind picked up and knocked her off course.  She had a lot of stops and starts this afternoon. 

Another interesting fact about rain in Los Angeles is that when we have it we are reminded that there is an actual river that runs through the city.  Most of the time it is dry, and because of that it is a familiar site in the movies.  

When we do have several days of rain, it doesn't take long to become a pretty fast moving river.  It's such a novelty, people are always needing to be rescued because of the things they try to do when it's flowing.  One of our newscasters posted this on twitter.  
Update: This was written Sunday afternoon (but never posted because the videos were giving me fits) and the rain hasn't stopped since.  We had a little break today around lunch time, so the kids could go out and play (Thank goodness since inside "recess" is the PITS!)  Other than that, the downpour continues.  Here are some additional pictures that show the river, and this site shows the flooding/damage the rain has caused.  What struck me most tonight was this view of the river in Long Beach.  It looks like ocean waves!
Here, "When it rains, it pours" is literal.  

14 comments:

  1. I've heard about the terrible mud slides. Hope you get relief soon!

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    1. Today was cold, but sunny. Things have started to dry out.

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  2. HHHHAAAAA, suck it up princess.
    The river Corrib in Galway looks like that boiling maelstrom everyday from October to June. And that's just a tiny little river. :-)
    Surely you must be sick to death of day in day out excellent sunshine. This must be a blessed relief.

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    1. I know! But that's Ireland! It rains there ALL the time. :) It never rains here! The river isn't even a trickle most of the time.
      I actually love the rain...on the weekend! During the week, between the traffic and the kids not being able to go out and play, it's such a nuisance. I don't know how girls in rainy places style their hair! Mine doesn't do anything it's supposed to in when it's raining.
      AND, because of the rain I can't get my trashcans out of my backyard for trash day because the wood on the gate is so waterlogged it's stuck. It's causing lots of problems Vince! ;)

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    2. My little video on youtube was kind of a disappointment. It's so unclear. Does the HD not transfer to YT? It's wooshy.

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    3. There's a little Gear thingy on the bottom of the Youtube bar. If you hover over it, it will open the Quality.
      Youtube transmits at the highest quality you uploaded. And you did it at the highest you could. But Youtube will default to Auto Quality if your bandwidth is shite, and you may have to go in and do it yourself.
      Here you uploaded it at 1080p, meaning far greater quality that most of us can see on our screens, the next highest is 4K, and that's hens teeth rare.
      Blogger might've set a quality limit, which I suspect that's what's going on. But you can click on the View in Youtube.

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    4. I was joking about the rain. I do know that in places like yours where flash flooding occurs it can be incredibly dangerous. And you can get sinkholes forming natural wadis/arroyos are blocked.
      Best to live on a hill :-)

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    5. I was joking too, as we are babies about weather. :)
      You would have laughed...last night I woke up in middle of the night coughing, so I got up in the dark and got a drink of water from the bathroom. When I got back to bed the dog had found her way to where I had just been sleeping. I told her to get down a couple of times but she burrowed into it more. Only half awake, I didn't have the patience so I figured I'd just get into bed and she'd move. But she didn't! I literally had to push and roll her over to the other side. And while we wrestled she grew about 10 feet and was all legs. Just dead weight! She even moaned and groaned at me for disturbing her. I was not amused at 2am!

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  3. We have been having crazy rains and winds too.
    NY pretty much over shadows NJ in all things so we usually root for all thing NY. Plus my husbands gets these tickets from work :)

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    1. It sounds like the weather has been crazy all over!
      I've never been much of a NY fan of any sport. I've always liked the Devils, although the Kings beat them tonight. ;) Free tickets would probably sway me too. So that's fun!

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  4. Every time I've heard about your rain on the news, I've wondered if you were okay and hopefully not getting swept away!! There has been so much weather news lately and we always marvel at the stupid things people seem to do (ultimately requiring rescue). It's really simple: "Turn around, don't drown"!

    I have fond memories of many a game of "heads up, seven up" on inside recess days. :)

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    1. Oh, ya, all is fine here, everything is just wet which is unusual. My side yard sits on a retaining wall and that, along with the trees that sit in dry earth for so many years and they might all fall over in the soupy soil. My across the street neighbor has a very tall palm tree and watching it wave in the wind and the pouring rain I worried it would fall over onto my house! But all is well! And it's not tornados or hurricanes, just so different for us.
      Yes, the crazy things people do! The streets were so flooded in some places people had their seadoos and wave runners out. It was nuts!
      I HATE indoor recess. As a teacher we get so short of break and I use that to eat lunch and work on the upcoming instruction. When the kids are in the room that time is useless. I'm so behind because we've had so many days of it!

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  5. Several days since you write this, so I trust things have dried out a bit. I know you're thankful to get the rain but I'm guessing you would have preferred to have it spaced out a bit.

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  6. I've been fast forwarding through the weather events on the evening news that I recorded while gone so missed this. I must say that I have been rooting against getting rain further east of LA at least in the basins that fill up the two reservoirs on the Colorado in the Grand Canyon corridor. I've been hoping they decommission the Glen Canyon dam and just concentrate on filling Lake Mead. But I'm glad that LA got the rain. I've been there a number of times and I've never seen that "river" with any water in it.

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