[daepp]

Living most of my life in the “Foothill” communities built along the southern slopes of the San Gabriel’s in So Cal (if you know the area, they run roughly from Pasadena eastward for 60-80 miles), flash flooding was something we were warned about regularly - almost from birth. So Cal doesn’t get much rain, but when we do that massive watershed up above us collects massive amounts of rainfall, and much of it flows down the north/south streets - which are rather steep - as well as the gullies, canyons etc that are more accustomed to being both dry and safe.
So i grew up with a healthy amount of warnings and respect for flash floods. We heard many true stories of people and cars who thought they could safely cross these raging currents, much to their demise. We’d often hear “…they’d located the body/car at the beach” where the Santa Ana or San Gabriel rivers - normally bone dry - reached the ocean. And that was enough for me. Consequently, while we all had to cross these waters at time, I new enough to avoid all but the smallest of torrents.

That said, I have been oddly fascinated with these fast-moving flows for most of my life. I can remember a time before we had storm drains (where the water was taken from the southbound lanes around me and channeled more safely away from contact).

Some memories:
- Before the storms drain, it was common to hear boulders crashing down our nearby streets as they were propelled down from the mountains. It’s a sound you’ll never forget.
- School crossing guards would deploy long 2X12 planks for kids to cross the raging waters in the street gutters. Hard to even imagine that in 2022 - but around here almost no one even lets their kids walk to school anymore.
- In the 1990’s a 12 year old girl was swept into one of these storms drains trying to cross the street nearby. She was pinned against the steel grate, unable to extricate herself, but a motorist saw what happened and, with tremendous efforts and with considerable risk to their own safety, managed to pull her to safety. My daughter heard that story and even now at 30 years of age still has a phobia about those storm drain entrances.
- Some of our streets BITD even had 4-6 foot walls to channel the water. Cross one of these an hour or so after it began raining hard and you were pretty much toast.
- In January, 1969 our mountains received more than our ANNUAL rainfall in 24 hours (18”). It had been raining off and on for several days, so the ground was already soaked. The resulting flash floods nearly wiped out the areas of Claremont Upland, Cucamonga and Etiwanda. Especially Cucamonga. I was 6 at the time, but I clearly remember a Saturday morning drive I took with my dad a few days after it ended. Theire were houses sitting in the middle of fields, a house-sized wooden wine barrel/tank sitting on Foothill Blvd (must’ve been empty) and all the ditches and flood control channels were bright yellow and orange - this was a huge citrus area then, and in January the trees are full and fruit iready to pick. The groves were devastated as so much of that fruit was washed/stripped from the trees and became waste. It was a sight I’ll never forget.
Fast forward to today and most of the street issues have been solved with proper engineering. And what were once dry riverbeds and ditches have often today been lined with concrete. It was done for flood control, but you can imagine what it’s done to the velocity of the downward flow of the water. It doesn’t rain often around here, but when it does, I’m still strangely fascinated by the whole thing and know where I can position myself to watch it all happen.
And then there’s YouTube, where I’ve recently discovered a whole host of folks who, like myself are fascinated by flash floods and who also film such things out in nature. Good stuff. But be vigilant always… (Semper vigilans - isn’t that somebody’s motto??)
(Edit: in the time it took for me to write this I see many have posted those YouTube videos – good deal!)