Friday, January 22, 2010

It's Spanish for....

Tornado off Huntington Beach Pier, sent to me by my SIL who lives there (Meghan, did you take this?)


The last time El Niño came around, I was in high school. There was a lot of talk about all the severe weather we were going to have and making sure you had enough flashlights and powdered milk. And then what happened? Nothing. I was on the swim team, and I can remember swimming in the rain, but I think that happened every year.

Then, the first full year we're out of California, El Niño hits again (is it an every 10 year thing?), but this time, it was serious. No messing around. Tornadoes. Hail. Flooding. And, I'm not trying to gloss over all the people who had real damage to their homes or property, but I'm totally jealous. I love severe weather. It's like taking a vacation in your own home: you get to see new sights, smell new smells, be inconvenienced by things out of your control, get awed by natural wonders.

Of course, I can write this from the comfort of my 55˚-partly-cloudy Southern Arizona (we did get a little bit of that last storm... just enough to make everything soggy and get our backyard good and muddy for Daisy to run around in) and my house is in the same place as opposed to being picked up and moved 100 feet away by a mudslide. My family in California is probably thinking that this storm was exactly the opposite of fun and that they wish the next 10-year storm will be a dud like 1999, or whenever it was.

Oh well, at least I have monsoon season to look forward to.

2 comments:

Megan said...

Matthias told me to link this just for fun!

Nice tornado.

Myriah Cohen said...

I LOVE this storm! I love passing by homes that are getting flooded, and thinking to myself, "Ha, the idiots.. never should have built there..."

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