THIS morning the skies opened and dumped about an inch of rain on Long Beach in the space of an hour. But by the time I left for work the weather had calmed down. “Ah,” I thought, “this looks easy”. Then Ev rang to say that there’s a tornado warning for Long Beach and could I hang around? Hang around for what, exactly? The tsunami? A couple of minutes later the warning was switched to Orange County which actually was hit by the tornado. Anyway, after assuring Ev that in case of a massive tidal wave I’d make sure to save the cats regardless of how drowned I was, I set off for work. Mistake…
This is Ocean Boulevard coming up to Bayshore Drive. I don’t think I encountered flooding like this in Wales. Well, I probably did, I mean after all it’s Wales, but I can’t remember the last time I drove down a road that was so lacking in… um… what’s that word… oh, that’s it: DRAINS.
So me and the Mini made it through that one, only to face this a few minutes later:
Almost the entire length of Ocean’s run through downtown was flooded. Driving through this is sort of fun (especially trying to manipulate the camera, steering wheel and gearstick) but it suddenly struck me: I don’t think Minis are made for this. But the little bugger made it through and I sped down the rest of Ocean to the freeway exit.
Does anywhere in this city have drains? But I was on the freeway, revving up to 75, flying along without a care in the world! Until I came to a dead halt. For even the bloody 710 was flooded - not that I knew that until I reached the water about a quarter of a mile and 30 minutes later…
So with that flood behind me I sped up in another desperate attempt to make it to the office only for (you’ve guessed it) this:
If you listen carefully you can hear me starting to whimper around the six-minute mark. After making my way slowly through this one it was plain sailing (pun intended) to the office, even if it took me two hours to go 40 miles. The 710 was closed soon after I got to Glendale, so it looks like I’m on the 605 going home tonight.
If you start at 5:45 you get to hear you say, “ooooooh my gooood Hey Mini!” Hilarious.
It must make a change to have weather.
Now you know why we moan about it so much. Esp. in the UK where ½ inch of snow brings a sort of ..erm.. meltdown and more than a light drizzle leads to some poor sod getting flooded out seeing as all new houses are built on flood plains ‘cos the country’s so crowded there’s nowhere else to build them.
Snowing here at the moment. Net effect: severe decrease in road friction and a light grey murk rather than our usual dark grey murk.
Still, at least we generally have drains…which leads to some poor sod getting flooded because they empty into rivers which have floodplains
“We”? “We”? I’m a bloody Brit too, James, and am well versed in moaning about the weather… you should hear me when it’s 104 degrees in Glendale
Had a problem like this a few years ago when I was living in Somerset.
Happly driving down the road to work (sorry glumly driving down the road to work), the road in question being a country lane about one and a half cars wide commonly driven along by milk tankers at just shy of light speed, the time half past dark o’clock when I came across a flood. I drove on, brave me, and realised that the water was higher than the bottom of my doors. As I reached the middle (returning were as tedious as to go o’er) the @*&“ing car stalled… as I was trying to start the engine the thought occured that the water was over my exhaust pipe and that this might be something of a problem (the internal combustion engine was and remains something of a mystery to me similar to Biblical literalism and the enduring popularity of Johnathon Ross)… another thought then occured, with that wonderful clarity of panic, that if I had to get out of the car my footwell would fill with water… fortunately on about the fifth attempt the car started (german engineering) and I passed without incident, although at a much slower rate than before.
Don’t envy your trip.