Wednesday, January 12, 2005

California Dreaming, on such a winter's day

Okay, everyone's sick of me whining about California. I'm going to wrap up my California weather report with a few general thoughts.
  1. I walked out of my hotel room this morning to sunny skies. I was stunned to learn that I was looking at a snow covered mountain that wasn't all that far away. The skies had been so low that I didn't even know it was there until the skies cleared.
  2. This storm was weird. I showed up in Southern California as it did. The first stage had native Californians telling me to be careful on the roads because people slide around a lot in the rain. I was a bit stunned by this as it rains much harder than this during the Wisconsin summer, and handling a vehicle in those rains is not overly difficult.
  3. What made this unique was that it just kept raining steadily. If it weren't for the fact that this continued for 4 or 5 straight days, the rain would not have been a problem at all.
  4. Much of Southern California is little more than the rain gutter of the Southern Californian mountains. This is a very beautiful corner of the world, and I understand why so many people flock here, but when you choose to live in an area whose beauty is the result of its dangers, do you really deserve to complain when the worst happens? I'm willing to admit that Wisconsin, although beautiful, does not have the gorgeous vistas of Southern California. Outside of the occasional tornado, blizzard, or flood, Wisconsin is quite safe, though, and that's a trade out I'm willing to make.

1 comment:

Mediaskeptic said...

We SoCals are very happy the rain is over. We have had rain for 15 days without a break - unheard of here. We are lucky if we have 5-10 rainy days for an entire season.

As for the mountains, if the rain didn't obscure the mountains, chances are the smog would have. I lived here three months before walking out on a balcony one day and went WHOA! It was frightening. Sorta like driving in fog and finding out you were traversing a storm drain or something.

As for the native lore about people sliding around when it rains, it is because we have so little rain that the oil accumulates on the road and the first rain is like driving on black ice. Plus, Californians just don't have a lot of experience driving in rain. Taken together, it can be awful.

For the most part, however, the rain story is media hype. Sure, we get slides and flooding and some accidents, but these are normal conditions of life, just as snowstorms and whiteouts and blizzards are common for other areas. But in So Cal, the media is so bored that car chases and rain stories are BIG NEWS. The rest of us yawn, which is why their ratings are pit city. But we wouldn't trade our normally mild climate for snowstorms, whiteouts and blizzards for anything. Well, maybe one thing: would be great to have a state government that wasn't A) Democrat and B)corrupt Democrats. Don't think that's Wisconsin though. LOL