Typical California Overreaction

People in other parts of the nation make fun of California all the time because of the way we overreact to weather. I think this is legitimate. We don't often get severe weather of any kind, and truly not like places in the rest of the world. 

I'm not sure if the blame for overreaction should be placed on us native Californians, however. I think the blame is more righteously placed on the media and on people who have moved here from other places.

First, California weather media has a very hard job presenting a program that isn't totally boring. Even a small amount of rain or wind is pumped up and dramatized just because it's unusual. We who are natives tend to ignore this. But people who have moved here from places where weather can actually be very dangerous, and weathermen are actually not entertainers, are accustomed to taking things more seriously.

The problem is even worse when we have weathermen and ladies who are transplanted here from other places. If they've only been here for a couple of years, while we've been having a drought, they haven't even seen a typical local storm yet.

We who have been here a while understand full well what a Pineapple Express is. In 1987, I believe, I was working swing shift in a type shop by myself. It rained so hard one night, water started backing up in the drains and coming back into the building. I had to unplug all the electric equipment and put things on top of tables before I checked out and went home.

The trip home - about 15 miles - was very difficult. If I hadn't been driving a big pickup, I wouldn't have managed it because every little dip in the highway was full of water. At one of these places I could see the top of a Volkswagen floating away.

In Sloughhouse, Deer Creek quickly overflowed its banks and the levee was washed out in a couple of spots. Even so, nothing was harmed much, the creek is slightly downgrade from all the houses here, the valley seems flatter than it actually is and the early inhabits were wise.

The river can handle a lot of local rain. It's only a problem when there's a lot of rain up in the Sierras on a heavy snowpack. In 1987 it didn't rain on snow, as I recall, but there was a lot of rain in the foothills and that came roaring down our way a couple of days later. So, the creek had receded, the sun was shining, and we were watching the river rise. It's what you do when you live in SLOUGHhouse. As usual, the river rose until the levees broke downstream in Wilton, where the waterway is narrower, and then the water levels here started to recede.

Right now there is scarcely any snow in the Sierras. Could we have as heavy a rainstorm as we had in 1987? Maybe. Is it really a problem? Well, creeks could rise. Every time we have a drought, people manage to build houses where they shouldn't and some of those could be in trouble. (The next few days will be a great time for house hunters to check properties out for problems.) The low spots on the freeways could fill with water (why are the freeways built with low spots?), it could get windy and scary on the roadways, especially for people who don't generally even worry about replacing their windshield wipers because they don't have to use them very often.

The headlines have changed over the past week..."Worst storm in 9, 7, 5 Years." Okay, since we haven't had much of a storm in the past 10 years, even, that isn't saying much.

Schools are closed, people are staying home, eeek! Eeeeeek!!! Are the rest of you laughing at us yet?

I suppose it's still possible we'll have some problems, and it's probably better to be safe than sorry, and I see nothing wrong with kids staying home to play in the mud (this is a warm storm). 

But wouldn't it be nice to have news and weather without drama? Something you could actually count on to be truthful? Thank you Fox "News" for polluting the airways with your crappy influence.  

If today or tomorrow actually turns out to be a problem, I will happily eat my words. But we don't have hurricanes here, we don't have polar vortexes or whatever else the rest of the country goes through. It's mostly just old, boring California with really low reservoirs right now that can totally handle quite a bit of rainfall.

So please don't worry about us. Yet.