A Tropical Storm in August—Followed by an Earthquake?

My friend Bill Korn had it right: “So. Floods. Tempests of wind. Even an earthquake. It seems like Someone is having an Old Testament-y kind of day.” Today, for the first time in eighty-four years, Los Angeles was hit by a summer hurricane that snaked its way north from Baja California. Just as a kind of bonus, we also had a Richter 5.1 earthquake around 2:40 this afternoon. (Fortunately, it was centered in Ojai, which is more than fifty miles northwest of here.)

Typically, L.A. has a short rainy season that lasts roughly from December to March. In the sixty-odd years I have lived in Southern California, we have not had any intense tropical summer storm events like this one. The rain started twelve hours ago and bids fair to continue for another whole day.

Thankfully, we are on the western edge of the storm, so we have not had any gale-force winds, just a whole lot of rain.

Martine and I went out for a Thai lunch early this afternoon, but otherwise we just stayed put, hoping with our fingers crossed that we would not have another power outage.