If I see ONE Locust, I'll Be Under the Bed

One of the reasons I live in Southern CA is for the weather. What? You thought it was the excellent housing prices and lack of superficiality? I am not a huge fan of cold weather, hence, I live where it is temperate, some might say downright warm. I like that the snow is well-behaved here. It knows it's place. It perches up in the mountains where it belongs. If I want to ski or otherwise visit it, I travel about an hour and a half. Just about right. In return, it doesn't blow cold north winds inland.

But today, all bets were off. Something was seriously wacky with the weather in Orange County and the Inland Empire today. After a solid week of ninety to one-hundred-degree days (yes, I said 100 DEGREES) this week cooled off to around the early 70s with a cool wind. It was a cold slap in the face after last week's heat wave. I know, you feel so sorry for me, don't you? Bear with me.

Today it rained. But not just rained, it did weird things as well. It started out fine, just a bit of rain, late in the season, but doable. I had to take JBug to band practice, so we all piled in the car along with about umpteen billion other hapless mortals who decided to get stuck on the freeway doing twenty m.p.h. and little else. I rented a car today because mine was in the shop. I had never driven a PT Cruiser before, but it was a bit close to the ground for my taste. With the driving rain and the backed up drains, it was like being in a boat. The roads were awfully flooded; the drains just couldn't keep up with the deluge once the skies opened. JBug said, "Now we know how people in Venice feel!" (get it? The gondoliers pilot the canals).

In addition to the heavy rain, there was lightning and thunder and I said a prayer for Shaker you don't know Shaker? Oh, he is my baby, my Macbook Pro. He is gorgeous, with a red Speck case. I love him. I was busy all afternoon, and all I could think is that lighting would hit and my computer was only sleeping and it would be fried. Thankfully, that didn't happen.

After band, we were driving down the road when JBear said, "Hey there's snow!" Of course, that's ridiculous, because, well, we live in Orange County, and it is May after all, and yes, it is raining, but really, how silly can it get? So I answered him and said, "No, honey, it must just look like snow, there is no snow here." He was insistent, and I had some time to kill, so I turned the car around. Sure enough, there were piles of what looked like snow along the sides of buildings. So I stopped. And it was ice, and did look like snow. It had hailed. But the bizarre thing is it seems to have only hailed in the THREE BLOCK vicinity of the area. This might not seem out of the ordinary for you, but I assure you, here in Southern CA, it is blog fodder. My children are 14, 9 and 6, respectively. And they cannot remember ever having seen hail. It doesn't happen here.

Found out later that in addition to torrential rains, flash flooding, lightning, thunder and hail, there were also three tornadoes in Riverside County! I am thinking the end of the world here?

T, who is waiting for the frogs to fall

Technorati:Southern California, weather, hail, tornado, global warming