It's not just LA. The San Francisco Bay Area is ill-equipped to handle the kind of rain that we called in Florida, Tuesday.

http://blog.sfgate.com/stew/2014/12/11/are-we-storm-wimps-making-fun-of-san-francisco/

Ah yes, coastal Florida, where the streets double as overflow storm drains. Houston and New Orleans too.

I too get a laugh about how traffic goes to hell in L.A. when it rains (as long as I'm not stuck in the middle of it). I have to remind myself that it's the same thing that a half inch of snow does to Atlanta. In somewhat fairness to the Angelenos, mudslides and flash floods are a thing there at certain times of year, so in heavy rain it does pay to be wary. I drove through the Southeast U.S. Christmas Day flood a couple of weeks ago; I had to divert around a flash flood and I drove through a bunch of water elsewhere, and what was normally a 75-minute trip took 2-1/2 hours.

The last time I was on the road in Michigan in a snowstorm, I started to think, "Well, I had a pretty great life..." because I was sure we were going to die.

And we were in my friend's husband's HUGE pickup truck, not some tiny PC pretend car like I have (2004 Honda Insight). There are Michigan snowflakes that are bigger.

Was in Orlando and sheets of glass were flying off of buildings, areas of hail, and more water coming down than in my shower and my Sister goes "Yes, it rains here every afternoon."

I have to remind myself that it's the same thing that a half inch of snow does to Atlanta. ~ Posted by: Cousin Dave at January 6, 2016 1:28 PM

Funny you should mention Atlanta and snow.

I was in the Great Atlanta Blizzard of 1993. I was stuck in my apartment because I didn't trust my little Honda to successfully navigate the steep downhill grade in the parking lot, the bottom of which was lined with expensive cars.

http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local/20-years-ago-today-atlanta-slammed-by-rare-blizzar/nWqcL/

A similar thing happened to me in Gainesville, Florida a few years earlier. A three-day rainstorm followed by freezing temperatures blanketed North Florida with ice and snow, crippling everything.

The mayor of Jacksonville was chided for not having enough snow equipment, but he stood his ground, saying he refused to spend taxpayer money on expensive equipment (and maintenance) that would only be needed once per decade.

I do remember L.A. weatherman Fritz Coleman breathlessly announcing rainfall totals.

"A half-inch in West L.A.! Three-tenths of an inch reported in Boyle Heights! THREE-QUARTERS OF AN INCH IN ENCINO — they really got it good..."

The funniest thing about the 1993 Blizzard was that I was a kid when that happened, and happened to be in Atlanta, visiting relatives. Being from Ohio, and a good driver, my dad got us all the way up into northern Tennessee, where we got an impromptu extension of our vacation because the ice storm had hit, making it impossible to go more than 15 MPH on the freeway safely. I think we missed something like 10 days of school that year due to snow days, and had 3 buses go off the road (thankfully no one got hurt, just damaged buses).

You know you're in trouble when you can hear the snowflakes land. They're that huge, huge I tell you. And usually that leads to 6+ inches of accumulation.

Now, Gulf coast rains are a thing of beauty. I count as heavy rain the sort that you can't see across the street. Less than that? moderate or perhaps light rain. Of course, the night we got 10" from the remnants of a tropical storm was not fun driving home.

Did not want. But it did fill a man made lake that had been drained and mucked out in a night.

That 1993 Atlanta storm? ah, yes, that was when the American Meteorological Society was holding their annual meeting in Atlanta. I knew some folks who bugged out early so they could get home in Mississippi before things hit.

Got as far as Birmingham. Then they got iced in. Ice: something no one can drive on, unless you've got chains or studded tires. And in most places, studded tire are forbidden.

And I think it was in that storm, a bus carrying a minor league hockey team got stuck in the mess on I-75 in Tennessee. One of the players laced up his skates, and skated up and down the highway working for a tow truck driver as a spotter, making arrangements to get people towed out of the ditch and back onto the highway.

His coach busted him, tho. Don't remember if he had to donate the money to charity, or just fined the amount made.

Yeah, the '93 blizzard. I had a little Nissan and it didn't leave the garage for four days. A relative of mine made the mistake of trying to drive from Atlanta to Birmingham that Saturday. It's normally a two-hour drive. He made it to my mom's house in Birmingham after twelve hours. He was starving by then and was hoping to get something to eat, but my mom had been without power for a day by then and she had had to throw out everything in the fridge. He ate an unheated can of soup.

That Sunday, NASCAR was supposed to have a race at Atlanta Motor Speedway. The broadcast came on at the scheduled time, and started out by showing a panned view of the track and saying, "Needless to say, there will not be a race today." There was so much snow that you could barely tell where the track surface was.

He ate an unheated can of soup. ~ Posted by: Cousin Dave at January 7, 2016 6:48 AM

I was lucky in that regard. There was a little convenience store across the street from my apartment that didn't lose power when I did. That store, along with my gas stove, enabled me to keep warm and fed for the two days I had no power.

The thing about driving in light rain- especially when it doesn't rain often- is that the roads are SUPER slick. We had a bit of rain in Austin yesterday afternoon, and traffic ended up gridlocked all over town- wrecks everywhere.

Texans south of the panhandle can't drive in the snow, either. I'd say we get enough snow cover to build a snowman once a decade. We tend to get sleet, or hail, or the lightest dusting of snow that hits the ground, then melts, then freezes again overnight, and causes ice patches all over roads and parking lots and porches and leads to all sort of accidents and injuries. And, like Florida, we generally don't have snow plows or shovels or anything else to deal with winter weather hazards. Generally, the municipal government or highway department just salts the bridges and warns everyone to stay home. If there's a winter storm warning, there's always a run on peanut butter and firewood, because OMG THE WORLD IS ENDING AND WE MIGHT NOT BE ABLE TO DRIVE ANYWHERE FOR AT LEAST 12 HOURS!!!

The thing about driving in light rain- especially when it doesn't rain often- is that the roads are SUPER slick. ~ Posted by: ahw at January 7, 2016 12:14 PM

California gets like that. The oils that would normally be washed away by frequent rainfalls build up are floated up onto the road surface with the first light rains and not washed away unless it's a strong rain. So, because it's a light rain, the drivers act like no precautions need to be taken and go sliding into the guardrail.

When it rains in LA:

http://youtu.be/1m4hryJ4Nag

ahw: "If there's a winter storm warning, there's always a run on peanut butter and firewood . . ."

Funny, around here winter storm predictions always produce a run on milk, bread, and toilet paper.

It is as if folks expect to be holed up for weeks eating nothing but French toast and shitting up the wazoo.

Quite often I've headed to the store because I've run out of cat food; only to see the crowd and tell my cats: "well, you're lucky tonight. No canned cat food; but, I do have a can or two of tuna fish at home. That will be your dinner."

My cats have never complained; so, I won't put up with the crowds for a can or two of cat food.

As for driving in winter weather; Yea, my dad was a truck driver and taught me how to handle it (except ice); so, it is the fools on the road that worry me. You know the ones who think just because they have 4-wheel drive they can just go and go as fast as they want; not realizing that they have the same breaking power as other cars. Fucking idiots!

Oh, there would be a run on toilet paper and bread here, too, charles. Not sure about milk.

People overestimate the ability of 4WD vehicles a lot, I think. My husband has gotten our Z71 Suburban stuck in the mud more than once. (I'd like to put a wench on it.) We haven't tried it in the snow, since we haven't gotten any real snow cover in forever. People also don't consider that fresh snow is NOT the same thing as ice.