Weather (Los Angeles, Santa Ana, Santa Monica: 2013, houses, live)

[afdinatl]

Question for LA natives. I saw on the news all the mudslides going on with the rainy weather. Why do you all have mudslides when it rains when we don't have them on the east coast near mountains. I thinking that your soil may be weaker since yall do not receive much rain. It this true or is it another reason?

[StreetLegal]

Yes, you are basically right. Los Angeles averages 15 inches of rain per year. We've been in a historic drought for two years. I think in 2013 LA only got 3.5 inches of rain. So a sudden rainstorm can cause havoc on the hillsides.

[SandyCo]

Southern California in particular has unique vegetation called chaparral that tends to catch fire easily when the dry, hot Santa Ana winds blow 45-60 mph through the mountain passes. Once such an inferno ignites in those conditions, it pretty much burns until the fuel is exhausted.

As an example, the Malibu fire of 1993, called The Old Topanga Fire, burned from Calabasas on the San Fernando Valley side of the Santa Monica Mountains all the way to the ocean five miles away. If you'd like to read more about it, click here:

http://www.malibucomplete.com/mc_his...y_1993fire.php

After fires have laid the hillsides bare, and the rains come (sometimes a couple of months later, and sometimes a couple of years later), there is nothing left to hold the soil in place, so the people whose houses may have miraculously survived the fires are now faced with flooding and mudslides.

Natural History of Fire and Flood Cycles (Please see the section titled "Fire/Flood Cycle".)

[afdinatl]

Thanks

[nmnita]

The fires last spring didn't help the situation much. To all our friends in the San Gabiel valley, especially those in Azusa and Glendora hope things are or will be back to normal asap. Mother nature sure can have her way from time to time huh? I guess she is telling us, regardless of where we call home, Ca,Tx,Fl or NEngland she will run our lives.