November 13, 2003
Torrential Rainfall in Southern California
Is Southern California cursed? Two weeks ago, Southern California was fighting the worst wildfires on record. As I said in my first post on the fire and in my followon post on this topic, the problems could be compounded by heavy rainfall. Well, tonight the breaking news is that Southern California has been experiencing one of those torrential storms that occasionally hits the area. In some locations in LA county, five inches of rain were recorded in a two hour period.
The storm's wrath was amplified when it stalled and kept its worst cells over the same areas for long periods of time.
I hope that the BARE (Burned Area Rehabilitation) team was able to remediate the worst threats, but two weeks from fire to flood is not much time. Yet it is good that they recognized the danger.
These rains are very early for California where normally the winter storms come in December and January.
The massive debris flows last happened in Southern California in the 1930s, another time when nature compounded a human economic problem to punish LA for its good fortune (an ideal climate most of the time).
Governor-elect Schwarzenegger will have his work cut out for him now. Kinda takes the shine off his inaugural, doesn't it?
Posted by Mary at November 13, 2003 01:45 AM | TrackBackAnd are we to expect the plague of locusts next? Would a plague of Republicans qualify?
Posted by: pessimist on November 13, 2003 03:09 PMTo be sure, environmental calamities do tend to hit in groups. The presence of smoke particles usually stimulates precipitation. Mike Davis also pointed out the problems implicit in Californian urbanization.
Posted by: James R MacLean on November 13, 2003 03:34 PM