This weekend was the first time it really felt like Autumn in Los Angeles. We had our first big rain starting late on Saturday and continuing off and on throughout Sunday. In fact we are supposed to have rain through Wednesday. I’m glad it’s raining. We certainly can use it. It continually amazes me though how quickly an arid landscape like LA can flood with just a few tenths of an inch of rain. Today I drove over the Los Angeles River and it was a raging torrent. Of course not nearly as bad as when we had an El Niño several years ago, but still with what many areas of the country would consider a light rain, Los Angeles floods like crazy.
The temperature has dropped too. It is these low to mid-60s days are the Octobers I remember from my youth. Actually it’s even a bit warmer than I remember. Of course those were Mid-West and New England Octobers. The kind of Octobers where you’d wake up and the orange and brown leaves that had fallen would be frozen to the ground with the first signs of frost. The kinds of Octobers where you could see your breath when you chatted with your friends while waiting at the bus stop for a ride to school. The kinds of October where if you didn’t wear gloves when you picked up your pumpkin from the local patch, your hands would be ice cold in minutes and you’d spend the entire drive home blowing on them, trying to warm them up.
So it’s not quite the same October that I remember as a child. But it’s still Autumn.