Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Climate

Requiem for Los Angeles’ Perfect Weather

It never rains in Southern California, especially not in August.

A man inspecting Hilary storm damage.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The whitecaps are back. Outside my window on Sunday, the rains of Tropical Storm Hilary raged down the concrete banks of the Los Angeles River. A riverbed that was barely more than wet 24 hours earlier swelled like choppy seas during Hilary’s peak, producing waves and whitewater a kayaker would envy. Locals in ponchos braved the footbridge for Instagram.

This scene happens anytime serious rain comes to Southern California. The L.A. River’s paved surface, made famous in Grease and Terminator 2, does exactly what the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers meant for it to do nearly a century ago: It reduces flooding risk in the city by sending stormwater out to sea. It’s just not supposed to happen in August.


When we moved four years ago to my wife’s home city, I was floored not only by the fabled sun, but by L.A.’s unwavering commitment to the mythology of its meteorology. It really is sunny every day. In the Midwest and Northeast, where I had lived most of my life, a lovely day is a possibility rather than an expectation. At first I couldn’t get used to the endless blue sky. And then, when I did, any change from the norm carried the feeling of gloom, like the November day when the cloudless streak broke and the first winter gray rolled in.

California’s clockwork climate makes any deviation from the natural order especially noticeable. August is a time for barely checking the phone’s weather app, unless you need to know whether it’s going to be hot or very hot. It is not a time for precipitation — rainy season is the winter, thank you very much — much less the first tropical storm warning in Southern California. The Dodgers don’t get rainouts, to say nothing of nature temporarily reclaiming their parking lot (which, upon further review, was just a little rain and a lot of reflection).

This year’s bizarre happenings can be attributed to the El Niño oscillation, which has thrown odd wet weather Southern California’s way countless times in the past. Last winter it brought freakish rainfalls that replenished the mountains with snowpack, pushing back against years of dire, severe drought. But deliverance brings disaster, too. Not enough water becomes too much very quickly, because Southern California is not built for a sustained downpour.

Homes in the hills are under threat from erosion, and even with the draining power of the L.A. River, flooding is a common problem. The rains of February 2023 came through the drywall in my ceiling because this old apartment building wasn’t made to reroute Poseidon’s complaint quite so quickly. Nobody else’s house was ready, either, so roofers were in short supply in the months to come.

The threat of major home repair and the grim realities of climate change take the fun out of Los Angeles’ rare storms. I used to root for rainy days as a break from routine, as a small victory against the West’s eternal drought worries, as a little something to refill the depleted city reservoirs I walk past every day. Now I hope the ceiling will hold, and I cringe as I watch the water roar down its paved embankment, knowing that, in the hot, dry years to come, we’ll wish we could keep more of it from washing out to sea.


The sinking feeling of “this is not normal” reached its Hilary apex on Sunday afternoon. Right in the middle of L.A.'s first tropical storm in over 80 years, an earthquake rattled the city. The shake wasn’t powerful enough to cause damage, but was big enough to make itself noticed and add psychological insult to injury.

“Hurriquake” sounds like an ill-conceived plot point from the absurd climate change thrillers of decades past, such as The Day After Tomorrow or 2012. Now, like the collapse of the North Atlantic current, it feels suddenly, depressingly possible. The price of living in California’s perfect climate used to be the looming threat of the Big One, the overdue quake that just might break everything. Now the state’s signature natural disaster drops in to remind us of its omnipresence, even as exotic catastrophes migrate to the Golden State.

While Hilary’s clouds clear, floodwaters recede, and patches of blue re-emerge, things still feel out of sorts. As the calendar turns to September and October and the rest of the country begins to think about the rites of autumn, California normally worries about the peak of wildfire season, which arrives alongside fall because it hasn’t rained for months. This year, the bizarre effects of a changed climate have led to an inversion, with the central and eastern U.S. beset by wildfire smoke this summer before SoCal flooded.

California’s climate remains an outlier from the rest of the nation’s, and remains a big part of its enduring charm. But what is obvious in Texas and Vermont is true here, too: No place is immune to climate change, and the weather rules of the past aren’t so hard and fast anymore.

Green

You’re out of free articles.

Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Climate

AM Briefing: NOAA Nominee Vows to Fill Forecaster Vacancies

On Neil Jacobs’ confirmation hearing, OBBBA costs, and Saudi Aramco

Would-be NOAA Administrator Vows to Fill Forecaster Vacancies
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: Temperatures are climbing toward 100 degrees Fahrenheit in central and eastern Texas, complicating recovery efforts after the floodsMore than 10,000 people have been evacuated in southwestern China due to flooding from the remnants of Typhoon DanasMebane, North Carolina, has less than two days of drinking water left after its water treatment plant sustained damage from Tropical Storm Chantal.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Trump’s nominee to head NOAA vows to fill staffing vacancies

Neil Jacobs, President Trump’s nominee to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, fielded questions from the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee on Wednesday about how to prevent future catastrophes like the Texas floods, Politico reports. “If confirmed, I want to ensure that staffing weather service offices is a top priority,” Jacobs said, even as the administration has cut more than 2,000 staff positions this year. Jacobs also told senators that he supports the president’s 2026 budget, which would further cut $2.2 billion from NOAA, including funding for the maintenance of weather models that accurately forecast the Texas storms. During the hearing, Jacobs acknowledged that humans have an “influence” on the climate, and said he’d direct NOAA to embrace “new technologies” and partner with industry “to advance global observing systems.”

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Climate Tech

What’s Left of the LPO After the One Big Beautiful Bill?

Some of the Loan Programs Office’s signature programs are hollowed-out shells.

Blurred money.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

With a stroke of President Trump’s Sharpie, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is now law, stripping the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office of much of its lending power. The law rescinds unobligated credit subsidies for a number of the office’s key programs, including portions of the $3.6 billion allocated to the Loan Guarantee Program, $5 billion for the Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment Program, $3 billion for the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Program, and $75 million for the Tribal Energy Loan Guarantee Program.

Just three years ago, the Inflation Reduction Act supercharged LPO, originally established in 2005 to help stand up innovative new clean energy technologies that weren’t yet considered bankable for the private sector, expanding its lending authority to roughly $400 billion. While OBBBA leaves much of the office’s theoretical lending authority intact, eliminating credit subsidies means that it no longer really has the tools to make use of those dollars.

Keep reading...Show less
Electric Vehicles

Can EVs Relieve Our Need to Speed?

Electric vehicle batteries are more efficient at lower speeds — which, with electricity prices rising, could make us finally slow down.

A Tesla as a snail.
Heatmap Illustration/Tesla, Getty Images

The contours of a 30-year-old TV commercial linger in my head. The spot, whose production value matched that of local access programming, aired on the Armed Forces Network in the 1990s when the Air Force had stationed my father overseas. In the lo-fi video, two identical military green vehicles are given the same amount of fuel and the same course to drive. The truck traveling 10 miles per hour faster takes the lead, then sputters to a stop when it runs out of gas. The slower one eventually zips by, a mechanical tortoise triumphant over the hare. The message was clear: slow down and save energy.

That a car uses a lot more energy to go fast is nothing new. Anyone who remembers the 55 miles per hour national speed limit of the 1970s and 80s put in place to counter oil shortages knows this logic all too well. But in the time of electric vehicles, when driving too fast slashes a car’s range and burns through increasingly expensive electricity, the speed penalty is front and center again. And maybe that’s not a bad thing.

Keep reading...Show less