stormy weather
23/01/2010
By most accounts, weather in the Bay Area is considered pretty friendly. We don’t get horribly hot summers, or frigid winters. And when you do, they are the exception, not the norm. Some people attribute Mark Twain as saying the coldest winter he ever saw was a summer in San Francisco, but that hasn’t been verified. And it really isn’t the case.
The last week or so, the Bay Area saw a series of storms and it wrecked quite a bit of havoc all around. As usual, with most storms, trees were downed, power went out, some homes flooded, potholes appeared, hail the size of quarters showered in some places and people freaked out at the sound of rain pelting and thunder droning. What is unusual about the storms this time is that it isn’t a whole day of moderate rain, but intervals of really heavy tropical thunderstorm-esque drenchings, with the accompanying thunderbolts and lightning, but not all that very frightning, eh!
When you come from the tropics, you’re used to and prepared for the inconveniences of rain, and you don’t bat an eyelid at the deafening gush of all that water just spewing. Thunder and lightning is not a big deal either. If anything, it’s a signal for me to sleep in.
True Bay Area-ites, I suppose, are less used to it. Low lying homes had to be sandbagged because the water levels started rising after the first day. On the second day, roads near the beach like the Great Highway were closed off because the ground started eroding and the sides of the road started collapsing. Gusty winds downed branches and trees and disrupted power in a few neighbourhoods. Some cars were light ablaze by downed powerlines, which is pretty freaky. And some people were injured (some fatally) by trees falling on their vehicles. On the third day and beyond, rivers broke their banks and some roads were completely flooded.
Well. Before these really wet five or so days, there was an apartment complex in Pacifica that was already evacuating residents because the bluff that their building stood on started eroding badly. The building management tried to get permits to add rocks to the bottom of the bluff to reinforce it, but by the time they did it was too little too late. Residents had to stay out, and it was unclear if the building could be salvaged.
With the recent rain we’ve been getting the situation got worse. What was once about 80 feet to the cliffside was now sand on the beach 16 storeys below. Even the building next door had to be evacuated. I was telling KF they should just drop the “a” at the back of Pacifica, since it’s pretty much now just the Pacific. Ocean. Ha! Anyway, when we got a break from the rain today, we took a drive over to kaypoh a bit.
It doesn’t look like much now, but they used to have a pretty large backyard! The street in front looked like a war zone; it was cordoned off and workers were walking in and out. Some residents milled around, in and out of the neighbouring apartments, but there were more people ogling at the spectacle than there were in the units.
They do get a spectacular view of the Pacific Ocean, though. But I wonder if it’s really necessary to live right next to it for the view.
Anyway. The rain will start picking up steam tomorrow night, and by Monday it’ll be rainy again. It’s a little annoying, but it sure beats water rationing.
