Overflow

Posted on January 9, 2005 in Weather

Today, the cup ranneth over. I stopped briefly next to Santiago Creek preparatory to an interview about the danger posed by floods. Waters spewed out of Modjeska Canyon like the invective of reactionaries and leftist radicals. People who lived on the other side either cowered in their homes or found other lodging: there was no crossing the water. I took several photos with my Nikon and two with my camera phone (here and here.)

Even the storm drains have filled. As I came home from my interview in Villa Park, I had to slow for a backhoe in the left lane that strove to stop the blanched mud coming off the roadcut just before the Little Grand Canyon overlook along Santiago Canyon Road. Twin streams flowed down either side of Ridgeline. When they arrived at a storm drain in the curb, they piled up and gushed in white fountains before continuing to the next site where they did the same thing.

A report in the Christian Science Monitor marks what is coming down outside my window as highly unusual:

“Everything is a little exaggerated,” says Robert Kelly of the National Weather Service’s Hydrometeorological Prediction Center in Camp Springs, Md. “All [the systems] are unusual in their own right, so to have all three at the same time is more unusual.”

The three weather systems emerged just after Christmas and have hardly budged since, held in place by consistent conditions in the upper atmosphere.

Warm, wet air from the Gulf of Mexico is pushing north, bringing springtime temperatures to Dixie. A cold air mass has pushed down over the northern US from Canada, keeping the region susceptible to cold snaps. And winter storms continue to form in the Pacific, then ride the jet stream over southern California to the rest of the country.

Just remember there is no such thing as Global Climate Change. Chant that as your house floats away. It’s the Politically Correct thing to do when you’re losing everything to a storm.