Rain

[jrbl]

So this morning on KQED they were saying we were (at 8:30, when I left for work) on the tail end of the worst rain storm the Bay Area has seen in years. I was here for that one, too. It was nuts - there was actually thunder (this is no big deal to Midwesterners, but out here, thunder is thought to be a sign of Armageddon

Comments

[chully]

Crazy how culture works. People young and old in Japan are surprised to hear that lakes freeze solid enough that you can drive on them, or at least very excited to hear that you can skate on natural ice anywhere in the wide expanse of north america.
Around you, apparently the thunderheads don't rumble and linger, they just get down to business and rain or float on. Very interesting.

[jrbl]

Yeah, I've seen lightning and heard thunder in California few enough times to count on one hand, and most of those have been in the last two days. It puts me in mind to think about when I was a kid, and there was this tiny earthquake that you could feel in Cincinnati, and everybody was all freaking out. It made me wonder if local kids blow rain storms similarly out of proportion.

This morning I was musing on how much better roads in the midwest are at coping with lots of rain (I can't think of anywhere else I've lived that it was even possible for the interstate to flood), and I realized that the main way we Midwesterners cope with rain is with complex earthworks. Raised roads, careful embankments and drainage systems, etc. And of course they can't really do that here, because the first time you had a 4.5 earthquake it would turn to liquid shit and your road would be ruined.

It's a good thing they don't have huge thunderstorms *and* earthquakes. We'd all be riding ox to work.