A torrent of warnings had flooded Los Angeles to prepare for some back-to-back storms.
Not for years had a drought parched Southland weathered what would be such a Noah-like deluge, excited newsmakers reported, with flood advisories issued from Santa Barbara to Mexico. Of special concern were torrential mudslides poised to spill from hills blackened by raging wildfires.
But did the glamour city in the eyes of the nation ever gird itself for its gargantuan flood? Not L.A.
“What’s wrong with human nature, L.A. style?” asked Southern California weather guru Bill Patzert, climatologist at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge. “We like to take risks — we’re not built for water.”
In what could be a modern retake of Paramount’s upcoming “Noah,” greater Tinseltown awoke after a steady nighttime drumbeat and dodge raindrops on the way to their cars.
Without proper raincoats, it seemed. Without umbrellas. And without protection for spindly heels.
Then commuters accustomed to the worst traffic jams in the nation headed out to re-conquer the superslab.
Without leaving a second earlier. Without taking more strategic routes. Without allowing an extra inch between their car grill and the next bumper.
Overnight, Los Angeles had gotten two inches of rain — twice as much as it had seen since July, having received 10 percent of its normal rainfall. Not since 10 inches of rain fell in two weeks at the close of 2010 had the city seemed to experience such a deluge.
But as with every downpour following every wildfire, Los Angeles always reacts the same.
Tens of thousands went without power as untrimmed city trees overwhelmed power lines. Hundreds of streets across inland valleys flooded after the same backed-up storm drains caused the same constipated roadway traffic.
Dozens of cars driving a simple line spun out on the web of metropolitan freeways, with the gnarliest crashes being encounters with big rigs.
Even city traffic engineers didn’t seem to get it right. Commuters sat dead in the water along a tangle of streets after the Sepulveda Flood Control Basin closed off the heart of the San Fernando Valley. Trouble was, the flood basin had yet to flood, and morning motorists fought to get around its roadblocks.
Meanwhile, emergency responders begged stubborn residents to flee from mudslide-prone foothills below the recent Colby Fire in the San Gabriel Mountains above Azusa and Glendora.
While up to 1,000 homes faced mandatory evacuation, many residents chose to ignore the potential avalanche of mud and death.
When skies finally do clear, Angelenos will see a mountain of L.A. trash spill onto beaches up and down the coast.
And still, they may eventually forget the tens of billions of gallons of polluted water that washed from the Los Angeles River into the Pacific Ocean. Or the last torrential slide. Or the unrelenting downpour. Or the streets awash in rivers of mud. Yet despite the risks, people insist on living at the foot of some of the steepest mountains in the nation.
“They know it’s coming,” Patzert said. “It’s a way to thumb your nose at Mother Nature. And after they get burned out, flooded out or mudded out, they always return.”
Because in Los Angeles, residents lulled by endless sunny days never seem to remember the last time it poured.