"It never rains in California,
But boy, don't they warn you.
It pours,
Man, it pours."

I remember my South Gate (SE L.A., now black and mexican, I think) elementary school being flooded when there was too much rain. And a nearby Lake Elsinore tripling in size and flooding the beaches almost up to the road.

Ah, sunny So Cal.
Um, global warming?

You prolly missed my post about Kyoto crowding out disaster relief discussions ...

The last time I was in LA it rained several times. It was amusing to see how amazed some people were as it rained.

Yeah, but you can tell it's not London because there's not rubbish all over the street and there are not ten million hardy souls, despite the rain. Where did everybody go?

It is unfair, though. The same thing happens to very unhappy English tourists every July and August in Florida, which is tropical monsoon season. You would think that the word would have spread by now. It is 80 and sunny today. Lalala.

Ya brung it with ya... seriously, winter in California is the rainy, wet time of year. On the bright side, rain has it all over snow, because you USUALLY don't have to shovel rain out of your driveway on a Monday morning just to get to work.

As a native Southern Californian that now lives in London, nice to know you caught the rainy days. We usually get those in bunches, and then it's pretty clear for a good portion of the year.

However, here in London there were moments of sunshine. I was amazed. ;)

Yet here in Oregon, sucky weather capitol of the US, it's crispy cold and blue skies. I wonder if we will be able to catch tuna and marlin off the coast, like we did under the 1997 El Nino weather pattern....

Is that Mt. Hood in the background?

(And "sucky" is relative— I know several people who consider rain and/or cloudy skies the best weather ever.)

B. Durbin -- Sorry, the camera is facing south.

The camera is mounted on a swivel. It points all over.

I guess Samizdata now has a PDX webcam.

I spent some time in Southern California over the New Year's weekend. It rained buckets, but it wasn't particularly cold.

The tourists were in regular slickers or windbreakers.

The natives were bundled up like Eskimos.

I met a woman who told me, in all seriousness, that she was so happy to have moved from the Bay Area to Southern California because that allowed her to escape from the "freezing cold."

I live in the Bay Area. A few times it does get down to a whole 40 degrees F. (5 degrees C) in the daytime during our 2 1/2 month winter season.

Hah!

I worked at Disneyland for a year and a half and you could always spot the Northern Europeans and Midwesterners when it rained; they were in t-shirts and having a great time. The locals bought ten million ponchos and dragged their desperately annoyed children from attraction to attraction, looking thoroughly miserable. The Hawaiians bought parkas and begged to be directed towards the nearest source of long pants.

Oh, and because southern CA gets 290-325 sunny days a year, Disneyland, Universal, etc. weren't built to deal with rain. So in addition to closed attractions (the Teacups, for instance) on those 40-60 rainy days a year, they also send all the custodial staff out with brooms, pushing the water towards drains (good chunks of Tomorrowland and New Orleans Square flood every time it rains even a little bit -- and many of the street surfaces become insanely slippery when even a little rain falls).

On top of everything, Los Angeles has actually flooded at least three times in my memory -- including February of I think 1992, when I got my one and only time off of school due to the weather (my school -- Eagle Rock Elementary -- was supposed to come back on Friday, Valentine's day, from a 2-month winter holiday, and we instead came back the following Wednesday). My step-aunt got washed down a street ten blocks in her SUV. It was very scary, at least to me. My parents have similar stories from when they were teenagers. And, I mean, Malibu landslides, anyone?

But you'd think people would at least have it in the backs of their minds. You know, it's a desert. It doesn't rain at all for months, and then it comes down in torrents, the land can't absorb any of it, and no one knows what to do. It's like what happens with earthquakes, except no one talks about it until there's boulders in the middle of major highways.

Not to mention that nobody here knows how to drive in the rain! "Oh, my God! That's water coming out of the sky! AAAAAAAGH!!!"

(To be fair, LA drivers don't get much chance to practice driving in bad weather.)

Gabriel, are you still in town? I hope you have managed to enjoy your visit in spite of the awful weather.