For weather-deprived San Diego, today is a watershed day. That's because today is the start of round two of water being shed all over us. It's raining and has been all day. It rained an inch from last Sunday through last Monday, and it's having a go at us again. Rain is predicted tomorrow and Sunday through early Monday.
This morning the US Weather Service confirmed what meteorologists have been suggesting for the last 6 months. A full-fledged El Nino condition has developed in the South Pacific. When this happens, the Northwest United States gets drier, the Central US gets wetter and snowier, and the Southeast gets colder, leading to unusual snowfall in places like Georgia and Florida.
The storms that hit the West Coast where I am tend to be heavy rain bearers and more violent during an El Nino. This is the kind of condition when water spouts (mild tornadoes) are sighted off the coast, come ashore and selectively remove roofs from structures in the business districts or off an occasional residence. Thunderstorms sometimes entertain us as well, the last one cooking a house about 3 miles from where I live and shaking the walls of my own rather violently at the time of the hit.
Worst of all, hillsides denuded of growth due to our increasingly frequent wildfires, have a tendency to lose their grip in rains like this and come mudsliding down attempting to take out houses like a bowling ball taking out pins. This is the one occasion in that game when getting "spared" is more deirable than getting "striked." Fortunately, I'm not at much risk of that, just the water spouts and the lightning strikes.
The surfers love it, however, because it generates the biggest waves on the local beaches surfers ever see. Unfortunately, as the waves recede they take the beach with them and the sand then has to be replenished in the spring for the summer tourists. The coastal restaurants with their fabulous view "right near the breakers" dining rooms don't love it, because usually the breakers live up to their name and break the glass windows, flood the dining room and in general wreak havoc with those structures built too close to the ocean. This disrupts revenue quite badly much to management's chagrin. So they make it up with artificially high meal prices ripped from the unsuspecting tourists in the summer who simply have to eat their meals with the ocean at their feet and are willing to pay the premium to do so.
I watched seawater during one such storm churn across the Pacific Coast Highway (US 101) picking up huge boulders placed for decoration on the seaside and dashing them against buildings across the road or depositing them in the restaurant parking lots in the place of the cars usually parked there. And this wasn't anything near a true hurricane.
Ain't paradise swell?