Burst waterpipe or volunteer artesian well across the street from my house
We’re supposed to get 2 inches a day for at least 4 days. Not many places in the US have the infrastructure to manage that well.
I’m pretty sure that just about anywhere outside of the Southwest would have no trouble handling that. Things would get a little soggy but no too bad. Anyone in hurricane country has seen more rain than that in one day.
I wonder if my school is going to be hit by mudslides. We had quite a burn-off up the hill due to arson last year, and now 4 storms in a row. Good thing my classroom is buffered by a ringroad and a drainage ditch.
The cats are not at all happy with the weather. The kitten is psycho and the girls are skittish. They refuse to move away from us, which is sweet, but makes getting things done a pain. The lights have been flickering, so I brought in the camping lanterns in case the power takes a dump. Tomorrow’s drive to work is going to be…interesting.
My wife tells me about this.
Why does life change so much in LA if it rains? We live in Michigan and it rains quite a bit more than LA, though not all the time. When it rains…well, nothing happens, really.
I guess the roads are slightly slicker, but not by a lot.
What’s up?
My wife is extremely happy right now.
She loves the rain, and one of the few things she dislikes about living in San Diego is how little rain we get. The city averages under 10 inches a year, and last year we only got about two-thirds of that. She’s been sitting on the couch most of the afternoon, reading and looking out at the rain.
My sister, who lives in Australia, expressed considerable jealousy when i told her about our dry climate. She lives in an area where the average annual rainfall is 66 inches, and where they got 100 inches in 2009. They had three calendar months last year (February, March, and November) with 20-inch rainfall totals. On November 7, they got 14.6 inches in a day.
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Nobody is used to it.
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Northern areas with sand and salt and plows and such pull oil out of the roads. In LA, there’s none of that, so the roads are noticeably slicker than in the Northeast.
I actually scoffed heartily when I moved here and people freaked the hell out over the rain. Now, I still scoff, but just healthily. LA drivers are still selfish, undereducated chumps. At best.
Northern areas don’t do anything when it rains. They just let it drain off. I really find it bizarre that people drive worse in rain. Driving into a flash flood, yes, but normal traffic in the city? Bizzare.
Just follow Kevin and Bean’s advice about driving in the rain: Leave late, and drive twice as fast. That was you are out in the rain for less time and therefore safer. 
Remember this fact boys and girls: It is impossible to tell the depth of a puddle from the top.
OMG! Water is rising from the ground and falling from the sky, we are doomed. Doomed I say.
Run! Head for the hills!
Today has been absolute hell for me. I drove clear to Long Beach to buy some stuff at Trader Joe’s and the parking lot was at least THREE inches deep in rainwater! And I discovered I have a hole in my right shoe! And when I got home I found the terrible winds had blown over a potted plant on my porch! And I am all out of celery seed!
I just cannot take much more of this!
That’s the advice I always give! 
(Though I like the leaving late part. I might have to steal that.)
‘Farmer, I thought you said that puddle wasn’t very deep!’
‘Only comes up to here on mah ducks!’
Look at the bright side. Had the lot not been flooded, you wouldn’t know about the hole in your shoe!
Because, we don’t normally have inclement weather of any type. I mean seriously. It’s kind of wet in the winter and spring, and kind of hot in the middle of the summer, but that’s as extreme as it gets. Other than that, it’s temperate year-round and weather isn’t a factor in what we do, what we wear, etc. (Example: my heaviest jacket is denim.) So when we do have to deal with weather, it freaks us out a little bit because it is so abnormal.
If you live and drive in Michigan you have experience with slick roads. People in LA do not. So there is that, simple lack of experience.
Also, because there is little rain over the year, the road oil builds up over a longer period of time than in areas with more frequent rain. So when it does rain the roads may be measurably slicker than in rainy areas, at least until the rain washes them clean. So there is that too.
Also, the flash flood effect. Deep torrents of fast moving water on normal city streets and highways. Michigan is mostly flat, LA is canyons and valleys. So there is that too.
But, there is also the moron effect. For some unknown reason, when it is raining, some people drive in a way that they never would when it is dry and sunny. It’s kinda like the tourist effect, when in an unfamiliar situation some people get stoopidy.
Other things that happen in the rain:
–You find out your roof leaks. It has not rained in a year (literally, in some spots) so how would you know?
–You discover that your windshield wipers have glued themselves to the windshield and created a permanent curve which utterly fails in its task of wiping your windshield (thus accounting for a bit of the terrible driving).
–As mentioned upthread, all the oil that has been desposited on the streets is still sitting there, waiting to make the street as slick as snot. Much like driving on snow and ice, as I recall.
–You discover that your only shoes that are not sandals have dried out and cracked from being out in the rain the last time (a year ago).
Just a note about the dangers: we live at the bottom of a fairly tall hill, and there are no storm drains anywhere until the one right outside our house, so the curb water quite often gets up above the curb and goes very fast. A few years ago a woman up the hill was getting into her car when she slipped and slid under her car, and was pinned against the rear tire. She very nearly drowned and would have if some men across the street had not come to her rescue. A little worse than running out of Brie (not brie cheese, by the way; just brie.)
On the other hand, this stuff only happens about once every three years, and the rest of the time we live in paradise. So, never mind.
A few weeks ago I was in Florida with family. We decided to spend a day at the zoo. For most of that time, we were outside. Everyone kept complaining about the cold. Mom said her toes went numb. Everyone (but me) was bundled up like we were on an Arctic expedition. When we got back to the car everyone wanted something hot to drink. Thank God my brother in law packed us a thermos full of coffee! They stood shivering together, cheeks all rosy.
When I got in the car, I checked the temperature. It was 56.
Come on, people! Four of the five of us lived a significant portion of our lives in Rochester, NY. And before that, Iowa.
Wimps.
My dog made me literally LOL yesterday. I got home from work and took him out for a walk, and he stopped dead in his tracks with a completely genuine look of WFT?? on his face.
He had a hard time grasping the concept of a bath from the sky!
Fracking TORNADO warnings for Orange County this afternoon! WT unholy F is going on around here?!?
Surf’s up too- cowabunga, dude! 
Also, they are clocking wind gusts of over 72 mph in Newport Beach along the coast. FYI, sustained winds of 74-95 mph is a category 1 hurricane… just sayin’…
:eek:
More than a warning, there actually was a tornado in Goleta.
Disasters in California: Earthquakes, fires, flash floods, mudslides, and now, tornadoes.
We had some pretty fierce winds here yesterday, to go along with the driving rain.
Our neighborhood lost power just before 2 p.m., and got it back about four hours later.