Photo-finish Friday: Waiting for the rain

West Los Angeles, 18 February 2011, 11:00 am

As the song goes, it never rains in California . . . It pours, man, it pours. I'm waiting in the car for my mate to bring coffee for the road from Peets in the mini-mall at Westwood and Santa Monica. Not a place to park in the lot, of course, so it's me and the dog watching this "marine layer" roll in from the Pacific. Heavy rains forecast for LA today and tonight. 

 

It was still sunny in the desert when we got here two hours later, but that didn't last long. San Jacinto, the mountain across the valley from us has disappeared, all 10,834 feet of it. Outside there is the sharp fragrance of creosote, as the creosote bushes (Larrea tridentata) react to the rising humidity. 

 

At 5:00 as I write this, I can hear the rain coming down hard now, ringing in the downspouts from the roof. Before long, the washes that come off the incline from the foothills of Joshua Tree will spill over the streets with mud and rocks. But as the storm rolls on in the darkness of the approaching night, we'll settle in with a duraflame on the fire, pizza, and a netflix movie on the Roku. Could be worse.