Two nights ago, I went to bed with visions of Armageddon, death, destruction, acts of god, power, fury, nature and all sorts of bad mojo. Yesterday, I woke up in a dark apartment, an hour later than I should have, with a blank-faced alarm clock next to me, no hot water and rain spraying against the windows. I emailed into work my lateness (from my iPhone given the lack of electricity flowing through my usual internet connection), and my co-worker emailed back a sarcastic warning about “Storm Watch 2008.”
I’ve written it here before, but one thing that never will cease to amaze me is the sheer pussiness of Californians in the face of weather the rest of the nation, nay the world, takes as normal. Traffic snarls and stops, power goes out and folks get a mite hysterical having to worry about such emergent issues as lawn chairs blowing off their patio.
Arnie likes to brag on the size of his state’s economy. But, being in the top ten largest doesn’t actually say anything about whether it’s well run. The rolling black and brownouts made famous by Enron ain’t really that rare, which is kind of fucked up. The lights go out in our town a bit too frequently for a state that’s still considered part of the developed world in a neighborhood fueled by money that is all about shit that needs the juice to survive.
After dressing in the dark and half-assedly, but fully bare-assedly, taking a cold shower, I did make it to work where several warnings went out about what they were figuring was a high probability of power outages. (Again, we are talking the main drag of a well-funded by technology town.) I managed to survive the day as weather and traffic warnings popped up all day on the internet. A hard rain was a-falling.
Despite the dire warnings, we ventured out for food during a lull in the midst of the “major winter storm” activity. Ohmigod wind AND rain. How was one to survive? (My absolute favorite warnings all day on local websites and in the local weather were for the Sierras. The prediction was for snow. In the mountains. In the winter. At high elevations. Snow, can you believe it? Snow, in the mountains in the winter in the mountains.)
Along the route of our town’s downtown, a huge swath of shops and cafes were locked up tight and darkened. You can’t really read it, but this Peet’s coffee shop had a note saying only that the storm had caused an early closing. (Some of the shops had more enlightening stories on their hand made signs referencing the power outage.)
My fave, though, was this local store.
Yeah, clearly rain in the forecast is a clarion call for sandbagging your doorway. Run for your lives, water is falling from the skies.
Technorati Tags: 2008, California, Silicon valley, snow, Weather, storm_watch