What happened to the El Niño winter rains?
Everybody was talking, and the LAFD set up a sandbag program for residents to get ready for the torrential rains and mud slides. Then we had two really cold nights and wonderful summer weather. Even the animals got confused. And it wasn’t just warm; we set records for the heat wave.
Trees that were falling down from the two days of rain are now falling down because of the lack of rain. Who can figure that one out? S-T had daytime temperatures in the 90s and evenings in the 50s. I know that this is California’s winter, but it sure looks like summer came early.
Just in case: don’t let your rain gutters fill up or get rid of your sandbags. Traditionally, February is our wettest month and I’m betting that it is really going to rain in the next couple of weeks.
It’s not the intensity of the storms that’s the problem, it’s the cycle of rain that keeps hitting us that can cause hillsides to saturate and mud slides to occur. None of the storms that hit L.A. in February 1998 were individually spectacular, but combined, they dumped 14 inches of rain and washed out our bridges and roads. Just be prepared for the worst, and hope for the best.